


Screaming in a Synchronised Way

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: F/F, Ficlet Collection, Flash Fic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:49:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 46
Words: 24,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10082138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: A ficlet collection forSynchronised Screaming.Chapter 42: Safe: NSFW; just a moment of Sigrun and Tuuri having fun together at some point in a future where she's back among the living.Chapter 43: Resurrescue: The hardest part of breaking someone out of Tuonela is breaking yourself out along with her.Chapter 44: Meditations on Mouthwash: Reynir finds some rest aboard the quarantine ship.Chapter 45: Hungry: A quick Emil/Lalli character study, mildly NSFW if you squint.New:Chapter 46: Not Alone:  For the quotes prompt "I really don’t know what I love you means. I think it means ‘Don’t leave me here alone.’", Onni/Reynir post-first-adventure; SFW.





	1. A Rare High Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes and info/warnings/ratings will be posted in the individual chapters.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Siv/Helga: Relaxation: Siv hates her job, but thankfully a colleague comes for the rescue. (Siv/Helga, PG, pre-canon)

Siv dropped the first bag of used litter from the lab mice cages into the waste incinerator and pressed the button that reduced everything to a pile of ash.

She grimaced. When she’d finished her medical training on the Mora Rash Research Program and applied to stay in an assistant position, she’d expected something more glamorous than the menial work she'd done that far. Her grades and work ethic had impressed everyone, and she’d sailed past other applicants despite her lack of immunity, arriving to smiles and handshakes when she was made an official member. Everyone had assured her that a breakthrough was within reach, that after they had begun from nothing in Year 40, the secrets of the Rash were about to become unveiled, and Siv Karlsson - yes, her - would be on the team that liberated the world from the scourge of mankind.

She dropped the second bag of mice litter into the incinerator and pressed the button again, massaging at her twinging shoulder. None of the over 40 samples she had had a chance to contribute to in her three years there had yielded any success.

And now, mice droppings. Again. It wasn’t a sign that everything was pointless, but it often felt like it. She released a sigh of relief that it was the weekend, and strictly speaking her shift was over. The world might look different on Monday morning.

She slouched to the chemical shower behind the first airlock, let it spray and rinse her hazmat suit, peeled it off her and slouched on into the regular disinfectant shower, let Maja sniff her over in the changing room, and scritched her under her chin until she purred and butted her head into Siv’s hand.

It began raining in the ten minutes it took the ferry to cross from Sandholmen island where both the lab and the Sollerön quarantine facilities were located. As she approached Mora through the downpour, she could see a large dark spot waiting by the docks, but it wasn’t until she disembarked that she recognized one of the horse-drawn cabs that usually preyed on tourists by the station. From behind the windows, someone waved excitedly, and the door was pushed open.

“Siv! _There_ you are! Your schedule said you got off an hour ago, don’t always let people talk you into things! I saw Ebba leave instead of you, you know.”

“Helga?”

“Don’t just stand there in the rain, _get in_ before you start looking like a bum!”

Siv rubbed her eyes, glanced at the sky, and shrugged. She got into the carriage and pulled the door shut behind her. “I don’t already do? And why are you here? Did something happ-”

“- abducting you for some stress relief. Darling, you need a break!” Helga beamed at her. She looked tired as well. Rash Research tended to do that to people, especially to senior researchers like Helga, but it would take something other than that to break her spirits. Sharing lab shifts with Helga were some of the rare high moments at Siv’s job.

Sharing an evening with Helga was one of the rare high moments in her _life_.

A hot blush spread rose into her cheeks at the thought. Siv smiled. “Okay, I’m all ears. What did you have in mind?”

“Dinner first, my treat. I have a table reserved for us, though we’ll have to be quick getting there.”

Helga knocked on the window that separated them from the driver in front. She ran a hand through her hair, and Siv swore that it sparkled in the light of a street lamp they passed when the carriage began rumbling through the streets. “Then - up to you, though my idea involved that spa on Moragatan, champagne… I heard that they have Icelandic strawberries… and in the interest of frugality, we’ll have to share a room later.” Helga winked. 

Siv should have a million objections - her salary, how she wasn’t dressed for anything except a weekend at home, the man Helga had met at a fundraising ball not long ago… Tor-something…

… they all died on her tongue when Helga wrapped the pearl necklace she wore around her finger and beckoned Siv closer, the other hand on her knee. “Say yes, darling,” she whispered close to Siv’s ear. “For me?”

Siv thanked her lucky stars that she was sitting, or her knees would have gone weak.

“For you… yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, "looking like a bum" (or rather, not doing that) seems to be patented Västerström family advice, see Emil passing it on to Lalli. ;)


	2. Waking Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tuuri wakes up healed from coma after taking the cure. (Sigrun/Tuuri, PG)

Spots of dim and bright drift into Tuuri’s vision, shift and fade.

Some of the dark ones that don’t go away are vaguely people-shaped, and for a moment she’s cold and breathless, terrified like of a thing out of some dream that she shouldn’t be able to see. She half expects her own hand, when she looks at it, to be dark and formless or else scaly and clawed and hideous, not the human-shaped one it actually is against the mattress.

All it is is little blurry, the rest of the room more so. She can’t focus her eyes right, like they’re still half-asleep.

Then, like a curtain is drawn away and reality tilts itself right, one of the shadows ushers the others to the side. Her mind tries to make sense of them and who and why they are, but through the fog on it, she can’t remember. Her head feels lighter than the feather pillow it’s resting on, the words slip before they make sense until there’s a female voice rising, and that commands her focus for a moment.

“-et away from the window, will you? If she’s waking up for real this time she should get some sunlight, they kept her locked up in that crappy thing they called a quarant-” 

Someone opens the blinds, and her vision floods with light, sudden and overwhelming. The rest of the words are drowned out by the tickling - light tickles, she never knew - and then she sneezes, three times in quick succession.

It makes her head hurt and her ears ring. There’s a young male voice sounding worried, then rippling laughter. All must be well, then, but she reaches out just in case. The light has coaxed colours into being - there’s red, and a slightly different red, tall and short blond, and two familiar silvery heads - those names come to her first: Onni and Lalli. Maybe she should ask where she is, or why she is this way, but one of the reds elbows past the others and her face swims into clarity as she takes Tuuri’s hand and lifts it.

“Hey, Fuzzy-head,” she says, and it sounds a little like she’s choking. Something warm splashes down onto Tuuri’s hand and rolls down her wrist to soak into the fabric of her hospital gown, and _Sigrun_ , that’s her name, presses a kiss into her palm. “You made it. Welcome back.”

That’s the signal, apparently, for the rest of them to crowd around her, all at once, and most of them talking. All the different voices, it’s too much, and Onni takes her other hand, stroking it. Tuuri squeezes her eyes shut while Sigrun gripes at them to give her some space to breathe, and gives herself back over to drifting.

They’ll still be there when she wakes up next.


	3. Boundaries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Onni/Reynir - On the Interpretation of Dreams: While he is resting, Onni struggles with his attraction to a certain other mage. (Onni/Reynir, PG-13, implied sex)

Onni knows better than to claim that mage-dreams are not as real as the waking world. They have repercussions in the waking world, and the cut to his ear wasn’t the first reminder of it. His grandmother made sure that lesson stayed anchored in his mind when he woke with a bruise shaped like a swan bill on his arm the first time after encountering her.

That was twenty-four years ago.

But after the past few dreams, he questions. He knows, at least in theory, that when he is resting and less in control than he would ordinarily be, there are bound to be interludes of ordinary dreaming - wish-fulfillments, hopes, desires, fears that are the product of a human mind.

When Tuuri is in those, he recognizes after returning into mage-dreams, that they weren’t real, sometimes with thundering, unhappy heart. He misses her like he misses Saimaa, but she has no way of being there. When Reynir, that insufferably cheerful, naive, _hopeful_ Icelander, shows up in them, Onni takes a moment to untangle the threads, the same way he untangles Reynir’s hair from his braid in the dreaming. Only when he recognizes that his form remains that of his Luonto, with no human hands suited to the task, afterwards, he finds that that, too, was not real.

Disappointment follows, inevitably, and just as surely, Onni berates himself for feeling that way. He would be stupid to become attached. And yet - he can’t help the honey-taste on his tongue, a rare sweetness and brightness lingering on his memory.

On his lake, a yellow water-lily unfurls a bud. A slant of sunlight through the pines glitters on the water.

But he is not stupid. Once he is rested, once he has more control again, that will have been the last of it; he cannot afford distractions, not even in the shape of dreams. It means mistakes, and mistakes mean…

Eleven years ago.

The next time Reynir comes to “visit” him, against all orders and all common sense, Onni will put an end to it, he resolves as he rests and heals, and the boundaries blur the more he becomes himself again. He practices words and practices indifference to Reynir’s crestfallen reaction when he realizes the seriousness of the orders: _It is not safe. Use the radio if you must contact me._

But the next time that happens, Onni surfaces from a dream of unbuttoning Reynir’s coat and tunic, slowly brushing aside the rune-discs and following him down between the stones of his Haven, the rocking of their bodies into one another as a farewell he permits himself - not that he has a choice, but at least it will stay with him alone and compromise no one else.

It is for the best, before the boundaries blur too much for him to tell.

When he next looks, his hands are human, and sleeping next to him, with his hair unbound and spilling over the curve of one freckled shoulder is Reynir, and Onni’s Haven is filled to the brim with sunlight. Through his rising panic sounds the lazy droning of a bee, gathering nectar from the water lilies.

It is not the waking world, but it is no less real for it, and Onni knows better than to claim that. Whatever the repercussions… time has run out and he must face them.

He prepares to wake with bruises.


	4. Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun/Tuuri: If Not, Winter. Sigrun, during the progression of Tuuri's illness. 
> 
> Free verse, character death, probably blatantly OOC weirdness, I'm sorry. I probably should keep my grubby fingers off of poetry.

Winter comes late that year, or early, depending, creeping  
Into that liminal space that used to be, for the old-world  
Folks like great-grandmother Sigrun (before she went out there  
To take down her last troll, age 82 and still not used  
To the new-New-Year’s-Day in autumn when the old world died),  
Between the old year and the new.

The days already lengthen, but the sun - she’s lazy  
Those days. A pale coin through the mist, barely enough  
To make the frost glitter. The frozen earth thaws not even  
A sword-tip deep. Sigrun shouldn’t care. It’ll be fine. They  
Won’t need the pickaxe in the back of the tank lodged  
To hold up one pile of books, precious cargo.

They won’t need the shovel either, when it begins to snow,  
Rolling in from the sea and burying them, all about, in  
bedsheet-white, swan-white, shroud-white, soul-bird-white.  
Emil tells a story from his childhood about a little Swedish guy  
(Also called Emil for some reason) saving a good friend’s life  
Dragging him, through a snowstorm, to a doctor.

He manages to beat the odds. It makes Sigrun’s arm seize up.  
Way to twist the knife. Good job, Little Viking. Tuuri touches  
Her shoulder, and what they all know is spreading there.  
Apologies scald Sigrun’s tongue, her throat, swallowing  
Them down. Must be them; her tea’s tepid; mint for the heart  
And sugar for morale. It’s useless. Still they drink.

There’s nothing better to do than that, than grieving a dead girl driving  
When she’s not too feverish-confused, stomach-sick, or  
There’s snow that’s the entire world, and they’ll get stuck -  
Already are. They’ll miss the pickup-ship for sure, their food’s  
Already rationed, hardtack, mint tea, a handful wrinkly carrots.  
First they had cookies, back in the old year.

First they had sun, too, and a bridge breaking behind them  
Like the a farewell to life before. Intrepid, going backward-forward, lifting  
That veil of ancient fear, but finding more of the same new-old beneath,  
The sun dimming behind swathes of ghosts and spectres bent  
Upon destruction, while distraction sent first small mint-green leaves  
Into a heart, or maybe two, like sun.

How lucky - isn’t it? - that plants aren’t affected by the Rash at all.  
They grow, regardless of infection, though this one is a weed,  
With thorns that rake and sting, and Sigrun wants to rip it out,  
Freeze it until it dies. It’s winter, why is it still growing, stitching  
Them close together? Perhaps because it thrives on dirt and  
dead things, and Sigrun’s heart is over-full of that.

She dreams of Tuuri sleeping wrapped in snow-white-leaves, a bird  
Flying off quick-winged and shining at approach. The ivy grows from out  
Her shoulder, bearing fruit that is the vials of the cure, as useless  
As mint tea is to heal her heart. As cookies are. As driving is when  
All the world is wrapped in snow, and cabin fever wraps them tight. It’d take  
A pickaxe and a shovel to get through.

That barren, liminal space stretches ahead of them for days. Another  
Week of that, and Tuuri will be dead and gone, crashing them  
Down into a concrete spot in time, shattering perhaps the frozen  
Ground, the bridge ahead, toppling that stack of books  
The pickaxe still supports. Her death, first thing into the new-old  
Year, dying the same way the old world did.

But liminal space means miracles, perhaps. A thinning veil of winter-mist  
And snow and all that’s real, so dreams may walk the waking world,  
Blood sacrifice and prayer be heard. The season where mint tea may  
Heal a heart, a remedy become reality, the sun shine out so snow must  
Melt, and birds return - a forward-back through time and tragedy and  
Tuuri stays whole and hale and hers.

She is not ready for surrender, she isn’t ready to give in, give  
Up. So kissing Tuuri where in her dream the ivy grew, and in  
Reality it’s scarred-up skin, she hopes some miracle might still  
Appear, the intervention of a god - she isn’t picky which. But there is  
Nothing but what they make themselves, that final liminal time they are  
Alone abed with one another, love.

They turn those bedsheets into Tuuri’s shroud. The books fall  
When they retrieve the pickaxe and the shovel and the sword.  
A bird flies out. They crash through frozen ground until soft earth yields up to  
Open as a bed. And Sigrun’s heart is over-full of it, spills seeds and dirt -  
Flowers will grow there. In the spring, she will make sure of it.  
But now, all bird-white, ivy-white, it’s winter yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story Emil tells is meant to be Astrid Lindgren's Emil from Lönneberga, in which he does save farmhand Alfred's life.


	5. Safe Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the SynS prompt "Sigrun/Tuuri - Safe Return (everything will be FINE)". Can be read as a continuation of Chapter 2, set at some later point. 
> 
> Warning for mild trauma, nightmares, Rash-induced medical issues, but nothing graphic or unsettling, I don't think. 
> 
> Many thanks to Kiraly for her help! <3

Tuuri has been trying to keep tabs on her waking and sleeping since she woke up with weeks of her life missing. More got lost trying to struggle out of her coma all the way. 

But she's alive. She returned. She's safe. It was worth the risk. 

Everyone assures her that it's normal that her mind is still hazy when she's trying to recall this fact or that. She's lucky she still has a mind, has her souls about her and intact. And Onni - of course nothing could hold him in Mora, he came all the way to Iceland - pushes her not to try too hard to remember, saying it's okay if she forgets things. She won't need to remember the terrible things that happened when she comes back to Keuruu, he says. Only _that_ they happened. 

The calendar leaves on her bedside table come off day by day, and she tries not to think about the inevitable partings - at least until the next mission, next winter, no matter what Onni will say when she breaks that to him. She hasn't yet, and it's only a few months away. Most of the time she's too exhausted after physiotherapy, or the tests with mages and medics to determine why her story doesn't match that of the ill-fated cure victims of the past, or the sessions with the Nordic Council that have been set up in one of the hospital's auditoriums to spare her the trip across Reykjavík. For someone who just managed to survive the impossible she has quite the schedule, and at the end of the day she's happy if she manages to walk back to her room without help.

That evening, she's resolved to tell her brother, but she finds Sigrun fidgeting in her room instead. There's a new bunch of flowers in the vase on her windowsill that look like they were stolen out of some front garden in the city. Tuuri can just see Sigrun snatching them and running, and glances at the door half-expecting some angry gardener to burst through demanding them back. Sigrun has been bored, more so than the rest of them combined, and it'd figure that she'd go out of her way to try and provoke something, even while she's doing something that's really almost sweet. 

Sigrun sits, bouncing her leg, and gives the flowers, and then Tuuri, a raised eyebrow. 

"Eeee, did you stea… _get_ … them for me? They're pretty," Tuuri says. And they are, even if they're stolen, something delicate and light blue, and a few tufty sedges of cotton grass in between. Tuuri walks over and fusses over them, shifting them around in the vase, then she claims Sigrun's lap for herself by sitting on it, and leans her head against Sigrun's shoulder. She's tired, her knees and shoulders hurt, and she's grateful for both the reprieve and the flowers. "Thanks, Sigrun." 

Sigrun nuzzles her hair in response; her lips curve into a crooked grin. "Least I could do, don't fuss." 

"And now?" Tuuri asks. "I guess you didn't tell Onni either?"

"Nah, you don't kick a guy when he's already down, besides we don't really have enough language in common for that. I found Owl Boy asleep on your bed, and he'd cried your pillow into mush before that, so I sent him off to get you a new one and then grab some proper rest. I think he got that, at least."

"Mmm. But I don't think he's going to get any better than that, at least not at the moment… and if I tell him I want to go on another mission with you next winter..." 

"... he'll probably drown all of us with a magic wave of tears? Yeah." 

"Yeah," Tuuri sighs. "I mean… I've always known why he was so clingy, but that doesn't mean I don't want my own life, especially now that there's you… and I really don't care that he's still mad at you for… _failing_ me." 

In answer, Sigrun's arms go around her. "That's not what happened and he knows it."

Tuuri eases into her hold, and makes herself stay still against the nervous squirm she might do, torn between Sigrun and her brother, when the decision is one over the other and she wants both at once. 

"I said I don't care. Sometimes nobody can do anything, that's what Onni keeps saying, and he should stick with it, not just when it fits him. Not even Kokko could help, and she was there because he called her. But I'm still here. And I'd do it all over again." 

"All over again like that new mission?" 

"Just without the getting bitten part. Since I have you now, it doesn't need to happen again so you admit your feelings," Tuuri takes up that thread, gratefully. "Too bad I'm still not immune… but things are looking pretty good for our funding. The Nordic Council liked my reports, and they've been grilling me in a way that I think means they're trying to assess how much they can get away with cutting."

"Not a lot, or I'll cut them," Sigrun mutters against the side of Tuuri's head, into her hair, and Tuuri has to laugh a little. "I know. But I think that won't go anywhere, it'd just land you in jail. I think we can at least get a decent tank out of it, though, so trolls breaking through won't happen again." 

Because they keep coming back to it, and Tuuri doesn't _want_ to come back to it any more than she has to while she's awake (she still dreams about it), she leans up and steals a kiss from Sigrun to lapse into silence. It's nice, not having to think for a little while. 

"Mmmgh, Fuzzy," Sigrun says when she pulls away to catch her breath, "You're gonna have to let me breathe if you want me to captain that next mission." But she doesn't sound disgruntled, and doesn't pull away when Tuuri kisses her all over again. 

They stay like that for quite a while, long enough for the heaviness and hot ache in Tuuri's bones (it's a remnant of the Rash, assume the medics, to be expected given the usual developments and deformities of an infection; Tuuri was lucky to take the cure just soon enough) to have faded into a lazy glow by the time the lights-out announcement floats from the radio speakers in the ceiling. 

"Help me to bed?" Tuuri asks, and Sigrun hoists her over without further ado. She unabashedly eyes her while Tuuri changes, and pulls a face when she's ordered to fetch Tuuri her wash basin, toothbrush and towels, but earns another kiss for it. Her ablutions done, Tuuri stretches out, and Sigrun plops herself into the bedside chair. 

"Want me to stay the night?" Sigrun says in a way that isn't quite a question, and much more of a proposal. They're both reluctant to be apart at the moment. The days are bad enough, but with Sigrun near her Tuuri finds even the nightmares easier to bear, when they happen. Sometimes they don't even make it into her waking mind that way. And she doesn't have to grope for orientation about the how and where and when the same way when she wakes. 

It's a nightmare night. 

Tuuri jumps awake in the middle of it, her sheets and palms clammy with sweat and her heart thundering. Her chest feels like a void, and her mouth is dry. She tries to rise, but her knees are stiff and heavy when she moves, and the blanket they're under is not what's weighing them down, so that's not going to happen. She turns her head instead, tries to focus her eyes - it's easier in the dark, now - and spots red hair fanned out half over her pillow in a patch of light reflecting off the window, falling over a face with a nose that's big and sharp enough to stab someone. 

For some reason that thought makes her laugh, as well as she can with her mouth being as parched as it is. And that raspy laughter wakes Sigrun, and relief floods over her face. She's safe. She's safe. She's safe. They're both safe. 

She wants to ask for water, but turning her head away or spoiling the silence between them and Sigrun's face softening into fondness - that would be an unforgivable mistake. They lie, in the quiet of the night, and Tuuri looks at Sigrun until her lids grow heavy, and she tries to steer her thoughts toward the future mission, and the safe return from that. 

Everything will be fine. It'll make for much better dreams.


	6. Let's Not Sleep Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun/Tuuri: Let's Not Sleep Alone. 
> 
> The night following page 691. Angst, fluff and snuggles with a vaguely hurt/comfort bent.

Sigrun wakes up to a fuzzy-headed silhouette in the driver’s seat, dark against a night that’s bright with moonlight on frost. Tuuri sits still, but there’s too much tension in her body for her to be asleep. From her position on the cockpit bench, Sigrun can’t see her face, but she can hear Tuuri’s breathing and the little hiccups a voice does when someone’s gulping down the air, and see that condensation has misted on the cold glass of the windshield.

That probably was what woke Sigrun in the first place. During her army years, especially the ones in the barracks rather than at home - because even being the Generals’ daughter didn’t mean any special luxury unless you earned it - she’s learned to tone out some noises as harmless, identify others that’d deserve a pillow to be thrown at them, and the third kind that’d merit investigating.

This is definitely the third kind, but Sigrun hesitates. She’s not a stranger to trying to comfort upset recruits, but no amount of pep-talking and promises of future glory are going to solve this one.

Or the fact that it’s on her.

Or the fact that it makes her hurt from head to heart and back again because she was stupid enough to think that Tuuri was harmless when she could probably run laps around Sigrun with her sneaky streak alone, but she didn’t leave it at that; she somehow snuck straight into Sigrun’s heart.

She should go back to sleep. Instead she listens. There’s the rumble of the big guy’s breathing from where he’s sleeping leaning against the tape-sealed door in case Tuuri tries anything funny, if the Rash gets her as confused as it does with its victims, though that’d be early. It’s only been a few days. But with another non-immune on board they’re not taking any chances. It means as much privacy as they’re likely to have in their vehicle any time soon. It’s Sigrun’s turn at door duty the next night, so this is the best chance they’re going to get.

She clears her throat.

“Hey, Fuzzy-Head,” she says in a low voice. Tuuri’s breath hiccups another time, loudly, and she turns around. The moonlight picks out her red eyes and the tear-tracks over her round cheeks.

“H-how long were you awake?” Tuuri stutters, scrubbing over her face with both palms. “D-did you hear what…”

“Nah, just woke up. It’s safe with you. I was just thinking - get some more sleep. I need you up bright and early in the morning to fix the engine thing, except if you’d rather walk the rest of the way.”

“It won’t start,” Tuuri admits, miserably. Not that that’s news, but no need for pretense in the middle of the night, it seems. Some things are easier to admit in the dark. “I don’t know what else to try.”

“Get some more sleep,” Sigrun says. “It’s hard enough to think right if you’re rested, a good night’s sleep can’t hurt. It won’t start any better because you’re crying on it now.”

“I don’t know if I can sleep,” Tuuri counters. She still sounds miserable, but this is the most reticent and the saddest Sigrun has seen her, and it’s giving her a picture of her that she didn’t ask for, Tuuri being headstrong and stubborn and bright in a place she’s trusting herself to open up. It’s someone Sigrun would love to get to know better, as cute as the eager-to-please, starry-eyed Tuuri of the mission is.

“Tell you what,” Sigrun concedes. The inside of her head feels stuffy, and there’s a tired itch behind her eyes. And her arm has been hurting with the same angry, obnoxious throb since the attack. “Let’s not sleep alone.”

Tuuri’s mattress is on the cockpit floor, and Sigrun rolls off her bench onto it, wincing when one of the shoddy springs pokes her in the back, but it’s a thousand times more comfortable than the bench, and it smells like Tuuri. She worms under the blankets and opens her arms.

“That okay with you? You know, I keep my mouth shut about a lot of things I’m seeing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know about them. Or that I’m not feeling them.”

Silence follows. Tuuri is staring straight ahead again, but some reflection of moonlight is brightening her eyes, and then she nods, and slips into Sigrun’s arms with a sigh. The fight has all gone out of her, and tiredness is taking its place while she’s still burrowing into the blanket nest.

It’s strange how solid and warm she is. Somehow Sigrun had expected Tuuri to be half-faded already. But Sigrun’s chin fits neatly on top of Tuuri’s head, their combined weight dips the mattress just right so they lie in their own little dell in the center of it, fitting their bodies snug together like a fretwork puzzle.

“This is nice,” Tuuri says against Sigrun’s shoulder. She already sounds like she’s falling back asleep, like all she needed was a pair of solid arms around her. There’s something to be said for escapism by way of sleep, Sigrun guesses. She’s done it herself plenty of times, and if anything, Tuuri is following orders.

The niggly little voice that goes ‘I’m not even getting a kiss out of this? Boo,’ shuts up eventually. Sigrun tries to drown out the world in the rhythm of Tuuri’s breathing, the deepening pattern of warm air landing somewhere between her shoulder and her collarbone, but she finds that the longer she listens, the more awake she becomes. Nothing but the flicker of the instrument panel and a patch of sky and trees through the windows to keep her entertained. From the sounds of it, Mikkel is smacking his lips in his sleep, and that puts her in the mind of kissing again, but none of her tried-and-true fantasies stick, and if one did, she couldn’t even move without waking Tuuri. She even tries counting sheep, though that really should be Reynir’s thing. Sigrun’s sheep turn into trolls halfway through, and that only reminds her of all the stuff that got them where they are. Her arm throbs away.

A shooting star whizzes by. The moon dips a fraction deeper behind the trees. Sigrun sighs.

Tuuri shifts in her sleep, then sits up without warning, taking half the blankets with her. She peers into Sigrun’s face, blinks once, twice, and says, “You’re not keeping your end of the bargain.” Sigrun can’t tell if Tuuri is even awake or talking out of a dream.

“Oh? And what is that?” Sigrun replies. She can think of what that is, but apparently that’s not what Tuuri has in mind.

“Sleeping. You said we’d not sleep alone. You’re not in here,” Tuuri says, tapping her forehead. “Sleep.”

Then Tuuri leans down and kisses Sigrun full on the mouth. Sloppy and enthusiastic as it comes, Sigrun is so baffled she doesn’t even return it, and by the time her brain has sorted through the weirdness, Tuuri has already curled up against her side again and gone back to sleep, and there’s an angelic smile on her face.

“You’re right, Fuzzy,” Sigrun murmurs, wondering if there’s some magic in her little Finn after all, to be able to tell such things. And as if Tuuri’s kiss has kicked something loose, she can already feel her eyelids drooping.

And maybe there’ll be more kissing once they’ve had some rest and can suss out what this was all about. Sigrun would like that. That’s her last conscious thought of the night. 

Sigrun falls asleep touching a hand to her lips and smiling as she rests.

Morning is hours away.


	7. Where It Hurts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Sigrun and Mikkel - Where It Hurts   
> Being stuck in the Silent World, nothing is going right, people show they care in their own ways. 
> 
> Warning for some medical grossness, procedures, etc. related to Sigrun's infected arm, so let's go with PG-13 for the rating.

If Sigrun hadn’t been on the receiving end of Mikkel’s treatment a few times by now, she wouldn’t believe that those shovels he’s got for hands could be as careful as they are on her damn arm. Definitely the sort of hands that’d be able to gentle a panicked cow. Too bad she isn’t panicked, or a cow.

“Tell me where it hurts,” Mikkel rumbles as he moves his fingers across the wounds. Sometimes, when he presses down, pus and fluid come draining from under the scabs, and Sigrun bites her tongue to not gripe at Mikkel, or shout curses at any god who’s listening. As it is, she hisses and shrugs her shoulders. Her arm is hot and the skin feels tight enough over the swollen parts that she’s expecting it to burst like a boiled sausage, if those meds Mikkel has been forcing her to take don’t do something soon.

“Everywhere,” she says, trying to keep her voice level. And that’s true, isn’t it? Not just about the arm, about the whole pile of _dritt_ that they landed themselv — no, that _she_ landed them in. Hard to believe that she’d expected to go down in history for their discoveries less than a week ago.

Now all they’re probably doing is going down, nothing historic about it unless their defeat makes waves somehow. If they have to walk, there’s no ‘probably’ about it happening. She might make it, or at least stand the best chance out of all of them except perhaps the Twig, but that doesn’t make it a good chance. That’s not how she’s expected to die, and her arm isn’t helping matters.

“A little more specific, please,” Mikkel says.

“ _Everywhere_ ,” she repeats with emphasis this time, pulling her arm free and crossing it before her chest. She wishes she could have a sling again. It’d be easy enough to ask, but she can’t humble her pride that far yet. She knows Mikkel has been testing her; he’s done that since the beginning, challenging her authority and going on that little solo trip of his to see what he could get away with. She’d thought she’d had him after that, with the gracious apology and the pardon, and maybe a helping of bedroom eyes and compliments to make that go down sweeter for him. She’s handled a few recruits like that, but they usually outgrow those tendencies after a while.

Mikkel has her arm to levy against her now. It’s why she’s been hiding the infection from him in the first place. A word from the medic to declare her unfit for duty, and he’s first in command. He should be old enough to know better - if he’s not lied, he’s military, too, but she doesn’t totally trust him. Like? Yes. Trust? No more than she has to. She still has that slip of paper with his name on in her pocket, and it still doesn’t make her want to admit any more weakness than she has to, at least not until she has some ammunition - the figurative sort - against him, too.

Besides, if he staged another mutiny and stole her place, he’d also steal her responsibility later on, and especially regarding Tuuri she’s not going to go easy on herself. She hasn’t lost two team members at home and seen plenty of people die to write off another death because of wonky stitches. It’s kind of stopped mattering that that bite saved Reynir’s freckled butt the moment it killed Tuuri. Sure, she’s not dead yet, but that’s only a matter of time.

Mikkel is talking again, though this time in a low-enough voice that she wouldn’t have caught it even if she’d been listening. In the end, Mikkel just sighs, and some of his hot air seems to go out of him. If he could shrink down like a balloon, Sigrun thinks, he’d do that. He definitely looks it when he slouches over to the cooker and fetches a basin of hot water with some pungent herby stuff to bathe her arm in. The alcohol in it stings and the whole brew turns gross and cloudy before too long, but at least the pain eases some.

“You don’t look too great yourself,” Sigrun says to Mikkel when he peers at her face and takes her temperature the casual way, back of his hand against her forehead. His fingers shouldn’t be so nice and cool against her skin, and that’s probably a bad sign.

So are the bags under Mikkel’s half-lidded eyes that she’s getting a closeup of just then. Duffel-bag-sized. Huh.

She follows up anyway, and tries to make it sound like a joke, not like she’s trapped like some animal that’d sooner gnaw its foot off to get free. “Tell me where it hurts, big guy.”

Mikkel gives her a look before glancing furtively around the little camp site they’ve got going. Then he nods toward Lalli, who’s looking like a portion of death warmed over that hasn’t slept in a week, and Emil next to him who is hugging the kitten a little too hard seeing how she’s squirming. At the bucket of fish he brought back because they’re low on provisions. At Tuuri, who is slumped over the hood over the tank and kicking the ground sadly. At Sigrun’s arm. At the deep grey towers of clouds rolling in from the west that are promising a deluge at best, if not an outright storm. At the road ahead.

She can hazard a guess at what’s else is on his mind. Their boat, finding an empty pickup spot. Trolls slinking around their camp at night. At least that’s on hers.

Mikkel doesn’t follow up his answer with words at first, drying off her arm and starting the rest of the care routine before wrapping a clean set of bandages over everything. His fingers stay gentle all through that.

“Everywhere,” he rumbles eventually, after Sigrun has stared at him a bit.

And that’d be plenty of ammunition, but she can’t bring herself to put it to use, somehow. Suddenly asking for a sling - or not - isn’t just a part of the power struggle going on between them, it’ll just add to Mikkel’s burden. She’s the Captain. He’s one of her people. She can carry her part of them until it’s over, one way or the other.

It’s not like Mikkel tried that before dinner, himself. Nope. That’s her job, too.

“I know what you mean,” Sigrun says and rises when he’s done, slinging her good arm over his shoulders and landing a punch for good cheer. “But that’s not gonna stop us getting home.”

Mikkel heaves a sigh and shoulders his medicine kit. His mouth twitches upward in spite of it, and it almost looks like gratitude, the littlest bit. “I suppose that is true.”

It’s not much of a comfort, or very true, and they both know it. But just that moment, that doesn’t matter one bit.


	8. Life So Far

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tuuri's infection is progressing, and a decision is made. (Gen, Sigrun & Tuuri. Not a particularly happy fic, might deserve a warning for implied body horror.) 
> 
> For the prompt: _Sigrun & or / Any - My life summed up in three photographs (thus far)_

Four photographs from start to death. Fifteen days.

That’s all Hilde Rasmussen got. Some would call her lucky to be dead, instead of the alternative. Sigrun knows exactly why those photos lie spread around the desk. It’s easy to tell because the two they have of Tuuri lie scattered in between, taken from the back where the rash is crawling up toward her hair and down her shoulder-blade toward the spine.

Mikkel is in the cockpit with Tuuri for an examination and to snap the third photo. She’s doing better than Hilde, none of the bloody blisters, and she’s going to hang on longer, but that’s not a good sign. If she hangs on long enough…

Mikkel thinks it’s likely that she will.

Before Sigrun can let herself complete the thought, the door rolls open and Tuuri wanders into the office. She tucks her shirt back in and gives Sigrun a grin and a thumbs-up that’s as false as they come, even with how hard Tuuri is trying to put on a brave face. Then she lets herself fall into the chair by the radio and claps her hands over her face, and stays that way until her shoulders start shaking.

A chill runs through Sigrun. It might be the infection - she’s been having those all day when she hasn’t been burning up - but it might not be. Crying is worse than trolls because you can’t kill it, and she hates it.

She peels the photo from Mikkel’s hands when he joins them, smudging over the date and name noted carefully on the paper strip. She wipes the ink stain off on Mikkel’s jacket and ignores his grumble while the image develops, fading out of black into something milky and then full colours.

Tuuri’s number three. Mikkel snatches it from her grip and studies it. His face furrows like the fields on the farm probably do, the wrinkles go that deep.

“I believe,” he says eventually, with his voice level, others might say flat, “it is time to prepare the option we discussed, Tuuri. I will prepare you a kit to tide you over until you are capable of hunting independently.”

Red eyes glimpse up at Mikkel from between Tuuri’s gloved fingers, and she rubs a knuckle over her face. “Okay. If you think I…”

She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. They’ve discussed this particular Plan B to exhaustion, first among themselves and then over the radio with headquarters. Sigrun’s fallen asleep discussing it, and that was the one time Mikkel cuffed her in the shoulder hard enough to bruise.

Sigrun picks up the photos when Mikkel is gone to follow through on the plan. Wait until nightfall, find a sheltered spot, leave firewood, hardtack, cans of tuna they can’t strictly afford to give away. Tuuri’s blankets and mattress, clothes. Her family photograph - she insisted on that.

Leave Tuuri. Hope Mikkel can live up to his promise that he’ll be able to work out driving, get Emil to blow up both Lillebælt bridges behind them so Tuuri can’t follow even if she wants to.

Go on. Let the ship pick them up, go through the motions, go home.

Sigrun holds the stack of three photos out to Tuuri, talking even though her throat feels too tight for words, or even proper breathing. She’s not sure luck has anything to do with… anything. At all. Not any longer. Definitely not life and death.

She nudges the photos at Tuuri again.

“Your new life so far. Congratulations, Little Trolly-Head.”


	9. What The Wind Tells Of

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three Haiku from the Silent World. For the prompt _The Wind Has So Much to Tell This Spring_.

Melting snow swirls down  
Gurgling in roadside gutters  
Cherry blossoms settle.

A tank of six souls  
Making waves in the late thaw  
At last homeward bound.

Through the quiet city  
Wind whispers in amazement  
Of new life that spring.


	10. It's Just the Radio, Darling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tuuri tells Onni about her condition. (Angst, Gen, rated Teens.)

“… so great you’re awake, and we’re mostly okay, too! Sigrun isn’t feeling well, but we’ll be at the outpost soon so she can rest, and I’m keeping the tank going after the troll broke through and bit me, and — ”

Like Tuuri had flicked a switch, her voice broke from the chipper-upbeat chatter that was far too happy to put Onni at ease. Then the tears came. Gulping, ugly sobs from the radio made uglier by distortion and distance that tried to be words and weren’t, and still, terribly, made sense. 

“I’m — I'mgoingto — die. I'mso _sorry_ , Onni, I'm…”

Onni sat frozen. His hand was outstretched to the radio’s off-switch, but Tuuri still was crying, now wordless, though other voices were talking in the background. He latched onto them instead, the rumble of the bother of a Dane and a woman he assumed must be Sigrun.

He couldn’t understand a single word.

Instead, Tuuri’s sobs grew higher and more frantic, and then dimmed, as though she was moving away from the radio. Onni’s hands came down hard on his earphones, jammed them hard against his head to balance out the distance and hold on to her.

He couldn’t lose his sister, too.

A crackle, a tap on the microphone on the other end. Then, Icelandic. Mikkel.

“I am very sorry that you had to learn it this way. Sigrun is… handling your sister; Tuuri is not in a condition to speak, currently. I can assure you that we will find the most painless and humane way to… release her once she becomes less integral to the survival of the rest of us. We are anticipating two days until her services are no longer requi — ”

Onni wheeled through the frequencies, away.

He sat, remembered his mother explaining why it wasn’t always possible to reach another settlement on the radio. She’d had a way of explaining even the most horrible truths in a way that hurt a little less than they ought, the — 

— static, crackly and whooping in the speakers that replaced Mikkel’s voice. In between the pleas and lost babble on the airwaves, he could still hear his sister crying. Then a jump, a jam, and softly, almost at the edge of hearing, Finnish.

_… apua… Onni… help me…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from Vienna Teng's 'Radio'.


	11. Shout It Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little Sigrun's first day at school isn't going too well.

Sigrun scraped her fingernail over the crack in her desk again and worried some more at the stupid splinter of wood that wouldn’t quite come loose. If she could get it free she’d poke it up her nose so it’d bleed, and then she’d be sent home, and her parents and Uncle Trond couldn’t even be mad that she’d missed her very first day of school.

Or maybe she’d get Dagny to punch her during the break. Dagny was nice.

But except for Dagny it was a stupid school and stupid everything. Sigrun kicked the leg of her desk as someone somewhere in the front of the class shoved a chair back and walked up to the huge blackboard on the wall. Chalk screeched over the slate, and Sigrun thought about catching a grossling and letting it loose in the room. And then her teacher would die because she wasn’t immune, and that probably meant Sigrun would be in bad trouble.

Maybe she’d be good and not let a grossling loose in the classroom.

“Very good!” her teacher simpered at the ugly scrawl on the blackboard. “Now please write it down in your books, and then tell me what letter that is?”

It was an A. Sigrun knew, of course, just like she knew all the fruit from Iceland and how to draw cats and other things. Her parents were Captains and her mom would be a General soon, and her dad, too, and anyway they all said how she was so great, and they’d already taught her all the letters and still made her go to stupid school.

It was stupid.

Sigrun kicked her desk again. Her teacher frowned at her from across the room and then went and stood in front of her. She was tall and really thin and had a nose like a horse. Sigrun didn’t like her.

“Sigrun, would you please write the letter down and then tell us what it is?”

Sigrun glared at her teacher for a moment. Some people giggled in the back of the class where the older children sat and worked quietly. They probably thought Sigrun was stupid.

That was enough. The school was stupid and the people in it were stupid, and Sigrun wasn’t stupid.

She got up like you were supposed to do when you were answering the teacher. Then she kicked her chair so it feel over backward. Around her, everyone gasped.

The teacher made a grab for her, but Sigrun ran for the door quicker.

“AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa!” she shouted, and stuck her tongue out, and just before she slammed the classroom door shut behind her so they all knew she’d shouted the answer and not been afraid at all, she said again, “AAAAA!“ 

And then she was outside, and she’d never go back. She could shout, too, just like a Captain. Who needed any writing anyway?


	12. Asking for the Best Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun/Tuuri: Asking for the best thing / I stole back / from the dead 
> 
> Sigrun and Tuuri are on their way to Onni with a special request.

“Can’t I beat up the horror swan again instead?” Sigrun mutters the moment her foot touches Keuruu soil. “That’ll be easier than asking nicely.”

“O-only if you let me go back to sleep. If I’m dead again and you’re dead again, Onni can’t kill us.” Her fingers clench around Sigrun’s with the desperation of a vice. She’s marched Sigrun through everything she knows for the feat ahead, all the customs and proper behaviour that she knows, and still feels terribly unprepared.

“No way!” Sigrun says, loud enough for several heads to turn as they leave the docks behind them. She’s found resolve - or at least bravery - somewhere in herself as they walk. “Swan, owl, what’s the difference if it’s about keeping you? I died of that damn infected arm, broke out from Hel into Tuonela, and brought you back from the dead. He can’t say no!” Tuuri is suddenly glad that no one in her old home is likely to understand Norwegian.

“He’s my brother,” Tuuri says and tiptoes for a kiss. “And he’ll probably cry. "And," she adds, "if you beat him up, he’ll never let you marry me."


	13. Night Around Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun/Tuuri - the memory of you emerges from the night around me
> 
> Sigrun is not coping well with the events of the night of the battle. Luckily, she's not all alone.

Sigrun's out of the bed before she's fully awake, and stands naked, hands-on-her-knees hunched over and panting. Faint moonlight is filtering in through the roof window, making the twilight of the Norwegian summer a little brighter, and when Tuuri has struggled out of sleep and from under the bedcovers Sigrun just tossed on her, she sees sweat shine up Sigrun's face. 

"One day you'll fall down the ladder and break your neck," Tuuri says, mildly. By now it's become code between them, and she knows it helps Sigrun ground herself. They're in Dalsnes, in Sigrun's bedroom under the rafters of the Eide homestead. It's summer. It's safe as Dalsnes can be. 

And they're both alive. Sure, it took a minor miracle, but they are alive. 

"Doesn't make much of a difference," Sigrun mutters, letting herself fall back down to sit on the bed, over on Tuuri's side of it (if either of them have a side, as tangled-together as they tend to sleep when Sigrun doesn't go into one of her belly-sprawls and Tuuri either has to serve as pillow or twist herself up into a knot to still find room). 

"That night again?" 

Sigrun runs her hands over her face. The moonlight catches on the scars on her arm; discoloured, gnarly patches that still give her trouble sometimes when muscle memory decides they should be hurting. And sure enough, that's where her hand goes next. 

"Went flying again, yeah," Sigrun says, and under her breath adds, "Damnit." 

Tuuri fidgets. She knows that night well enough to picture it in detail by now, even though she never saw any more of it than the inside of the dark bunk of the cat-tank before the troll broke through the floor. She can picture Sigrun's arm seizing up, her taking a troll's whipping tail to the stomach, being thrown across the battlefield and landing in a heap, needing saving by Mikkel of all people. 

Her chest clenches with sympathy. But she remembers the claws and teeth of the troll Sigrun didn't get to fight, too - those she remembers up close and in slow motion.

"I'm glad you didn't get fight that one," she says. "We'd have had to bring you home as a pile of ashes. I like you better alive."

But that's not enough, Tuuri knows that from eleven years of mostly the same with Onni, and how some days when he's worse than others, nothing she can say is going to make anything better. And sure enough, Sigrun picks up the the thread of their conversation. 

"I almost lost you. It was my fault. I won't forgive myself that - you don't forgive losses like that," Sigrun counters, her mouth hard, and Tuuri thinks back to her own family and what concealing an infection can do, and knows that she's right. "Not if you're a decent Captain." 

But this is Sigrun, and Tuuri is in love with her, and she's not going to let her conscience torture her forever. They must have had this argument a hundred times by now, and Tuuri has run out of things to say, even though she ought to say something, instead of letting the silence linger until Sigrun turns her back on her. The moonlight slips over her shoulders, along the strands of muscle under her skin. Tuuri kneels on the bed and leans in to kiss there, knowing that the rustle of the blankets is enough to alert Sigrun and let her pull away if she wants to. She stays put for Tuuri to taste a faint, bitter note of salt, although the muscles tighten under Tuuri's lips and sure enough, Sigrun is clenching her hands into fists. 

Tuuri prises them open with gentle force. Sigrun isn't putting up a fight (or Tuuri would never manage to get her to budge), but she doesn't know whether or not that's a good sign. But it's something new, and it kicks off something new to say. 

"I'm not a decent Captain," Tuuri says. "I'm not a Captain at all, so maybe…" she lets the words taper off while her lips map a way down Sigrun's spine, kissing away some of the tension, "... I shouldn't be saying this, but… I'm the one who almost died of the Rash, and I forgive you. And you almost died when your arm got worse. I forgive you for that as well, even if I've never been that scared." 

Uncharacteristic silence from Sigrun, and breathing that's carefully kept steady. Almost despite herself, Tuuri thinks, because Sigrun usually blows steam arguing until her frustration runs itself dry, drums one of her fellow Captains out of bed for a fight, or they make love until there's no doubt left that they're both alive and well from the hammering of their hearts alone. Physical things, that's the language Sigrun understands best. Any other night, and Tuuri couldn't have kissed half as far down Sigrun's back. And maybe the absence of that and her opening fists are good signs after all. Maybe she's learning to cope and let go. 

Tuuri rests her forehead against Sigrun's shoulder, yawns widely, and leaves another kiss. "Let's get back to bed," she says. "You've got a training unit at noon. Where would they be without their Captain?" 

Sigrun huffs, but after a moment of stubborn resistance she lets herself fall over into the pillows. The light outlines other scars, faded now, all over the front of her body. They should frighten Tuuri, maybe, but she can't help but think that they're all marks of survival, not failure. Sigrun's eyes are already closed again, but the tense lines around her mouth and the shallow breathing tell Tuuri she's not asleep yet. 

Tuuri fits her own body alongside her with as much contact as she can muster, even tangling her legs with Sigrun's. Her skin still is clammy with sweat, but it's getting better. 

"Hey," she says as she's found a way that's somewhat comfortable and won't wake her with muscle cramps before she has to get up, "Don't hang on to that memory. I'm right here. Get some more sleep." 

When Tuuri has almost drifted off, there's a hand brushing through her hair. By now Tuuri would know Sigrun's touch in her sleep, and even though the moment passes without speaking, and Sigrun's touch relaxes, she hopes it counts as a good sign of some kind. 

Tuuri smiles, and slips into sleep.


	14. All Dolled Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emil & Sigrun - getting dolled up: Emil and Sigrun pretty up for the post-expedition party and new conquests. Gen, but mentions Emil/Lalli and Sigrun/Tuuri. (Prequel to the Aftermath part of [Sweet Little Nothings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9418694).)

“You _sure_ clean up nice.”

When Emil emerged from the hotel bathroom, Sigrun let loose a low whistle through her teeth. “Look at you, that’s what I call a proper Viking.”

He looked the part, too. In his ceremonial Cleanser uniform, freshly showered, scrubbed, manicured and gods knew what else he’d done, Sigrun had to look twice to recognize the guy coming into the room as the Emil she knew. If Emil’s hair had sparkled before, it shone like spun gold now, and sat like a smooth helmet around his head. He even smelled nice, Sigrun noticed, though that probably was because hygiene in the Silent World had proved tricky enough that the inside of her nose had died a little after their soap had run out, and then on the quarantine ship and in the hospital it was sterile this and sterile that and nothing else, and the inside of her nose wanted back the grubby mess she’d been before.

Emil was preening at the mirror, fiddling with the cravat of his dress uniform while Sigrun let herself flop over backward onto her bed. Well, Emil’s bed, given that she’d come into his room. It was late morning and she hadn’t bothered to change out of her pyjamas yet. Bed was a good place to be. They had hours to kill until the festival in honour of their victorious - and not a bit miraculous - return was set to start, but Emil had insisted she drop by early to help her get ready. “So, is there enough water left so can I go shower already, or do you need to fix up your lipstick first?”

“Eh?” Emil made a questioning noise. He was busy nudging a stray strand of hair into place, but then looked up and met her eyes in the mirror, smacking his lips. “Lip _balm_.”

“Powder?”

“All done.”

“Lashes?”

Emil fluttered his eyes in answer. His lashes looked longer and darker and prettier than they had any right to do. Sigrun thought back to when she’d doubted that Emil had any useful skills. Clearly she’d been the best kind of wrong.

“Right,” she said with a laugh as she climbed off the bed. “Twig won’t know what hit him when you show up dolled-up like this. Or the rest of that party. You’re going to break some hearts tonight, pretty guy.”

It was hard to tell underneath the makeup, but it almost looked like Emil was blushing. Sigrun didn’t quite catch the mumble, but could have sworn it included the word _Lalli_.

“Or just Lalli, okay,” she said with a grin, standing and glancing at the dark blue wraparound number that hung over the back of a chair with her belts. Like Hel she’d let anybody think she was some prissy society lady rather than a Norwegian Army Captain, dress or no dress. She’d have taken her knife, too, but the hotel management had confiscated all so-called questionable objects from their luggage.

Oh well. At least she had Emil to help her with some proper war-paint, and Lalli’s heart wasn’t going to be the only Finnish one that’d break that night.

“Though really you can have them all, as long as you leave Tuuri to me.”


	15. Five Times Sigrun Failed to Appreciate Tuuri's Bibliophilia, and One Time She Didn't

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun/Tuuri - How Sigrun Eide learned to appreciate literature: Reading in bed featuring, Tuuri, Sigrun, and a pun that doesn't actually work in Norwegian, five-times-plus-one. Fairly suggestive, so probably deserves an M-rating.

**I.**

The first time, Sigrun looked at Tuuri like she’d grown another head. Or… a set of tentacles, or something like it. Or maybe she’d turned troll without noticing, even if the hands holding the book on her lap looked human to her.

“E-ew?” Tuuri echoed.

“What is _that_ doing in my bed?” Sigrun managed to make ‘that’ sound like she’d spotted a pile of troll gunk on her pillow.

Tuuri put her book down. “What do you mean?”

Sigrun plucked the book from the blankets with pointy fingers before Tuuri could object, opened the window, and dropped it outside, then she joined Tuuri in bed. Her expression had grown so self-satisfied that Tuuri had to laugh despite the protests that wanted out.

“I know something better to do in bed,” Sigrun suggested. She proved it, too.

**II.**

“Fuzzy, I thought we’d settled this?”

The second time around, Sigrun had just come back from a hunt in a huff; the troll they’d been after had given them the slip in the mountains. She didn’t even try to toss the book out of the window again, just let herself fall into bed with a grumble and pulled the pillow over her head to go to sleep.

Or pretend to sleep.

Her snoring - Tuuri was sure it was on purpose - eventually made concentrating impossible. Tuuri marked the page she’d been on, put the book aside, and curled against Sigrun’s turned back. She could always pick up reading come morning.

The snoring quieted soon after.

**III.**

The third time, _the forest shone with early stars, and a tall, white-clad figure stood in the clearing, holding a silver pitcher in a slender hand, offering…_

… cold feet sticking out under the blanket, and something warm touching them lightly. “Trudi, go away,” Tuuri muttered, nudging at the weight tipping the mattress at the foot end of the bed. She wouldn’t let the homestead cats distract her from a scene like that. Trudi especially had a habit of bothering her when things became interesting.

_… to see what her mirror would reveal to the two…_

“Truuudi,” Tuuri whined, when the cat nuzzled up her leg insistently. Only when a pair of hands pulled her book away and tossed it into a corner with a clatter, Tuuri recognized that it wasn’t a cat at all. She was going to protest that it was a valuable Old World classic and the best book she’d read in a long time, but all she managed of that complaint was “Sigru–mngf,” when a pair of lips came down on her own and the taste of mead filled her mouth. Right. The Captains’ strategy meeting Sigrun had been attending in the mead hall probably had concluded with drinking.

Sigrun pulled back and lifted the shirt she was wearing over her head before it joined the book in its corner. “Read _these_ , Fuzzy. Only one letter different from books, and so much more fun!”

Well. Drunk or not, Tuuri had to admit that Sigrun had a point.

**IV.**

The fourth time, Tuuri could find none of her books anywhere, but she found Sigrun sprawling on top of the bedsheets with nothing left to the imagination.

She was grinning like what Tuuri’s books called a Cheshire Cat.

“I put up with your books three times now,” Sigrun purred. “So I want you to make that up to me tonight. Three times. Then I’ll tell you where they are.”

All protests - about how Tuuri didn’t have much else to do when Sigrun was out late, either hunting or doing some other Captain business that Tuuri wasn’t privy to, or that Sigrun, strictly speaking, hadn’t put up with her reading at all - died on her tongue when Sigrun arched her back off the bed suggestively.

“Come on, you better start earning back that reading time of yours… first time.”

Tuuri earned it back in two.

**V.**

The fifth time, Tuuri decided that it was far better to stop defending and attack instead. Sigrun had learned to - at least somewhat - tolerate books in her bed. She still didn’t _like_ them, and more often than not she tried to sabotage Tuuri’s attempts to read - and succeeded, at that.

But a few radio-calls later (and a favour that Trond owed her for a lost drinking contest that her sore head had been a good price to pay for), and a package of books was coming her way on the next supply ship from Aurland a few days later.

Tuuri hid her surprises around Sigrun’s part of the homestead where Sigrun, and _only_ Sigrun would find them. Anything else would be a poor return of the hospitality Sigrun’s family had granted her. One went into Sigrun’s bathroom, one onto Sigrun’s cluttered desk half underneath some new recruitment papers, one under Sigrun’s pillow, and one, the most suggestive of them all, Tuuri kept for herself to settle into bed for the evening.

When Sigrun returned home from training that night, Tuuri had high hopes. Sigrun was freshly showered, which meant she couldn’t have missed the book in the bathroom, and she gave Tuuri a sidelong glance, even tilting her head to get a better look at the cover that Tuuri’s fingers were half hiding.

She knew exactly what it showed - the illustration of a redheaded woman in underwear, on her knees before another woman. Tuuri tried to keep her face blank and went back to the text. She wasn’t sure she managed to keep a blush off her face.

It didn’t take long for Sigrun to take the pity on her that Tuuri was, by then, desperately craving.

**+I.**

The next night, Sigrun pulled out the book Tuuri had hidden under her pillow.

“Soooo… ” she said, holding it like she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, “… the real thing’s definitely more fun… but the way you behaved last night, I think I wouldn’t mind some of this. Read to me, Fuzzy-Head?”

Tuuri was all too glad to oblige.


	16. Take Away the Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Onni/Reynir - first meeting in real life. Aboard the V/S Þór, Onni and Reynir meet face-to-face the first time.

The first time they meet in real life, there is a glass pane misting up under their fingertips.

It’s been Reynir’s request, really - his siblings all serve on the V/S Þór, and after grilling him over his idiotic idea to run away from home, they had some favours to call in with the medical officers. So Onni, who came on board at Øresund base along with the organizers of the expedition, is placed in the quarantine cell next to Reynir, separated only by a wall of glass.

When the suited-up medic officer is gone, they both kneel on their beds opposite each other as if they could do more than just look. It’s weird, seeing Onni in plain white-grey quarantine garb, not the elaborate dreamworld outfit, and with his hair still damp from the decon shower, even his pale eyelashes clinging together over reddened eyes. It’s weird not to be able to touch, taste, smell him, when Reynir has been imagining how the weight of Onni’s body against his would feel in waking. He hasn’t expected their first real meeting to be so sterile, not when there was the scent of living water and pine forests and rock in the dreamworld. In a way that feels more real than what they have at the moment.

But even so - Reynir finds it hard to breathe, a little, to see those bright, sad, silver-flecked eyes and the light in them up close awake, and wonders just what is going through Onni’s head. He looks like he so often has in the dreamworld, struggling to let his guard down, but it doesn’t ease up the way Reynir has become used to.

Of course it’d be harder in real life. Of course it’s harder now, with Tuuri struggling to recuperate from something that ought to have killed her. A miracle, maybe, but still a painful and uncertain one that shouldn’t have been needed in the first place.

Onni’s eyes flicker as if with tears before he closes them and leans his forehead against the wall.

Take away the glass and Reynir’s lips would be touching the skin of Onni’s forehead instead of the cool glass pane and the bitter tang of clinical disinfectant, instead of seeking a trace of lingering warmth that might slip past the barrier.

Take away the glass and fingertips would press to fingertips. Reynir aches to curl his fingers in Onni’s palm for real - not in dreams, not with cold glass in between them - and sink them into Onni’s hair.

Take away the glass and Reynir would be mouthing a ‘sorry’ against Onni’s forehead, down his throat, his chest, stomach. Two weeks of being so close and worlds away. He isn’t sure, suddenly, if this was a good idea. There are intercoms by the doors, but not for communication between the cells. They can’t even talk while they’re awake, when they both have so much to say.

Reynir mouths a ‘sorry’ against the glass anyway, hoping that Onni can maybe hear him by way of magic, somehow, but his eyes don’t open. Eventually, Reynir moves his pillow against the glass and stretches out on his bed, waiting for Onni to join him in dreams. It’ll only be a short distance across the dream sea, shorter than ever before.

Take away the glass, and his head would almost be on Onni’s knees.

Two weeks. Reynir isn’t sure he can wait that long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from fandom scholar Henry Jenkins' [essay](http://henryjenkins.org/2008/05/the_glass.html) on how to explain slash to a non-fannish audience. This fic is decidedly less meta, for the most part it's just a physical barrier here. (Missed opportunity? Maybe. Be my guest and make something better of it!)


	17. Cat Nap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kitty & Any - cat nap: Sigrun and Tuuri, immediately following page 724. (Kitty is around, but the humans hijacked this fic.)

" _Onni_ will think I'm dead." 

It took Tuuri a moment for her own words to sink into her brain. "And I can't tell him… ever. I-if I really am infected. I'm still in the clear. But if I'm not, I can't tell him goodbye." 

Sigrun cracked an eye open, but even so it was easy to see that it took her too much effort to last for long. "That's what happens in the field sometimes, Fuzzy. Sure, it'll wreck him, but… hang on until the ship shows up, and I'm sure they'll let you put in a last radio call."

Tuuri trotted over to Sigrun and slumped to the floor, leaning against the cockpit bench. "I never meant to make him worry, I really didn't. I thought he'd get over himself and come along the very last moment. I was _so sure_. I thought maybe he'd become less afraid if he could see that leaving Keuruu didn't mean we'd die right then. And if I get back alive now… all I did was prove him right. Or almost right. He'll keep me under lock and key in my room forever like I'm still a little kid." 

"Nah. We're not gonna let that happen; we'll need you along again next winter. And it'd be a shame if I couldn't see your fuzzy head around in the meantime. You're starting to give Pusekatt a run for her money." A gloved hand landed on Tuuri's head and fluffed through her hair, then came to rest on Tuuri's cheek.

She leaned into the worn leather of the grip, closing her eyes for a moment to enjoy the touch. It was uncomfortably warm even through the material, and that didn't spell out anything good for Sigrun's fever, but the thumb brushing back and forth over her cheekbone left her little choice except to stay still and block out the day and the acrid smoke that the open doors couldn't air out of the driver's cabin, and the thought of the dead radio, and Sigrun's infected arm, and Onni having no idea what happened to her. 

"If you give up now you might as well find yourself a nice spot for a pyre," Sigrun's sleepy voice murmured an afterthought. "So we're not doing that." 

It was easier to believe Sigrun that than it was herself, and Tuuri meant to tell her, but the shift of the body behind her distracted her. Sigrun rolled onto her stomach, Kisu climbed around the bench to find a new spot to settle down, and Sigrun's good arm wrapped around Tuuri's middle, pulling her closer until Sigrun could bury her nose in Tuuri's hair. 

"Sorry, Fuzzy," she said, slurred and barely intelligible through another yawn. "Sleep now, gotta keep my strength up." 

"Th-that's alright," Tuuri managed even as Sigrun's breathing quickly deepened into sleep, and Kisu began a low, contented purr. "I'll stay right here. I'll keep your watch." 

It wouldn't hurt to lean in against Sigrun and Kisu and just rest her eyes a moment.


	18. Blowing Off Steam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agneta/female co-worker - blowing off steam - Agneta and her co-worker shower together after a troll incident on the Dalahästen. That's it, that's the fic. (F/F, M-rating for nudity and a suggestive ending.)

The battle had been long enough for the troll blood between Agneta’s shoulder blades to dry. The shower did little to soak away the itchy crust it was forming on her skin, and then the saw jumped to life in front of the train and Agneta slipped on the supposedly non-slip shower floor, hastily closing soapy fingers around the rail on the wall. 

To add insult to injury, the water temperature flickered, a second of ice-cold shock against her heated-up skin. It woke her up like a cup of coffee would - the real stuff, not the dandelion-root substitute in the train survival rations. 

Bullshit. She hadn’t even _wanted_ to be awake again, and dreaming of coffee wasn’t going to help her relax faster. After a fight like the one they’d had (one of the death-sentence ones for any crew that wasn’t hers) because a troll that’d probably been half on its way to giant had thrown itself across the track and forced the train to stop before it de-railed so they could get the tenacious bastard dead - after a fight like that, she’d earned her rest. 

Agneta sighed and let herself fall back against the wall when the saw stopped screeching and the train resumed its regular, rattly, south-bound way. It was proving to be a harsh spring after a harsh winter with more rain than frost, and more troll activity than usual. She was well aware that ‘harsh’ carried a different connotation for anybody not in the military, but that made nothing better. 

The knock on the door might, telling her her ten minutes were up. She could set her clock after Liljá, especially when it came to showers. 

A second knock. “There are people waiting for their tur-” her colleague began, interrupted in mid-sentence by the door unlocking and opening in her face - almost, if not for her quick reflexes. A cloud of steam billowed out, and Agneta’s skin pimpled in the rush of cold air that got sucked into the shower cabin instead. Liljá, in expectation of her own shower had already discarded her own blood-soiled uniform in favour of a large towel. Gore crusted her hair. 

“Officer’s perks,” Agneta cut her short. “Come in, I need your help.” She grabbed Liljá by the wrist and pulled her inside the shower cabin, reaching around her second-in-command to snap the lock shut again, and turned her back on her. 

“Oh, right,” Liljá said, seeing the tenacious spot of gore, hung up her towel outside the shower, and squeezed a generous helping of liquid soap from the dispenser in the wall into her hand. “I’ll do yours if you do mine. I just want to be clean.” 

“Mmm.” 

“Take you shooting on Øresund Base,” Liljá added as her hands rubbed at the stain between Agneta’s shoulders. “And blowing some steam, sound good?” 

“Sounds good,” Agneta confirmed, closing her eyes for a moment while Liljá’s slippery hands massaged down the sore muscles along her spine, avoiding the bruises in the making. If they’d had the luxury of taking more time, she might even arch her back or encourage Liljá to go further than just massaging, but for the moment the expert pressure of Liljá’s fingers into her skin was enough. 

She gave herself over to the sensation, and to the hot water raining down on them. Mercifully, the saws stayed quiet. 

“Done,” Liljá murmured, while Agneta muttered her displeasure. Once she was _in_ the shower, Liljá’s meticulous time-keeping inevitably malfunctioned and she had taken a good while for the massage, but it had still been too short. Still, Agneta was quite glad exchange places and reciprocate, watching the water sluice down Liljá’s body and lending her a shimmer even under the ghastly neon lamp in the ceiling and the shadows of her hands rubbing soap into Liljá’s hair and skin.

She kept it perfunctory. Liljá had not asked for a massage, only to be clean, but when Agneta announced, “I am done,” and rinsed the last soap suds from Liljá’s hair, she met with a snort. 

“What about blowing steam? I could still use that.” 

“Ah, you meant now.”

Liljá nodded, warier now in the way she looked over her shoulder and turned so they were face-to-face. “Not if you’d rather not. I didn’t hurt my hands, if I need to I can take care of that myself.”

Instead of an answer, Agneta went to her knees into the puddle of soapy water that was the shower floor, grasping Liljá by the hips and pulling her forward against her mouth.


	19. Nicely Done, Emil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emil: Failed First Impressions: Dying in battle is one thing. Ruining your first impression with the Valkyrie sent to pick you up is quite another, Emil finds out. Especially if you already know her. 
> 
> Please note: This is a sequel to [The first day of the rest of your afterlife](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11263740) by Minutia, which merits reading first if you want mine to make sense. This picks up immediately after hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The summary probably already gives it away, but this contains Major Character Death in a post-canon setting. I also know that Lazy8 wrote a few afterlife ficlets that may have subconsciously influenced this, so credit where it's due if I happened to borrow anything, and many thanks to Laufey for nattering about Norse afterlife at me! :D

“So are you gonna turn around and look at me, or are your hands that interesting? You know, you’re lucky I already like you, or I’d be offended at the ‘ugly barbarian’ part.” 

Emil freezes. That voice. He _knows_ that voice, but that can’t be right - right? 

It’s been years since Sigrun went down a cliffside with the giant she’d been fighting one summer. The rest of them decided missions weren’t worth it without their Captain and handed things over to a new team, to move on with their lives as best they could. She’s been burned and buried forever. They all travelled to Dalsnes for the wake, and Emil got the worst hangover of his life.

Well. 

The anger and disbelief cool somehow, knowing she’s right there. 

“So. You’re a Valkyrie now,” he says, and peels his hands off his face with some effort, but doesn’t turn around yet. The battle blurs before his eyes. His mouth is - would be - is, damnit - dry. Who knew being dead would feel so much like being alive? He can almost hear the blood rush in his ears and feel his cheeks heat. “I should have guessed.”

“Yep. Still the most best, though you did nicely for yourself, Pretty Guy. Seems like the army was for you after all, and Captain at twenty-six is nothing to sneeze at.” 

He should be giving credit where it’s due and explain how much of it is due to her teaching him the ropes when he was just a green newbie to all of it. Instead, he only gapes at nothing in particular. “You know that…?” 

“Part of the job description. Old Guy was impressed enough with you he sent me to fetch you - it’s what I always told you, doesn’t matter if you believe it or not - put on a good-enough show and you don’t get out of it alive. It’s not so bad, though - you almost can’t tell the difference to being alive once you get used to it.”

“Right.” Emil gives the battlefield another look, glances at the blood soaking into the chest of his uniform, or what’s left of it after the troll got to him - through him - wondering briefly if the remaining four… five, counting Kissekatt, will travel to his funeral as well, but he’s pretty sure that one’s a yes. 

Then he looks down at himself, at the clothes - the fairytale outfit - he’s wearing now, byrnie and some truly ancient-looking tunic. It feels weird, and he rolls his shoulders for the mail to settle, huffs, and nods. At least it looks like the Cleansers are winning this one, even though there’s more casualties than just him: at the edge of the battle he can see a buxom Valkyrie pull one of his combat medics onto her horse; neither woman looks all that unhappy. 

Well then.

He’s as ready to go as he’ll ever be. 

Not very. 

Then he finally turns around, and there is Sigrun, leaning on a spear and smirking at him. “Good to see you, Little Viking. Try not to insult anybody when we get to Valhalla - the Einherjar just _love_ to fight.”


	20. Copenhagen After Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For F/F prompt week: **OFC/OFC - year 0 survival** : Two Copenhagen women early in Year 0.

Copenhagen goes darker by the day. 

It's not just the weather with a gross, slushy, early winter already splattering onto the streets and sticking to Pia's boots, it's more and more houses that stand lightless - people have gone on the run, the TV news has unfamiliar faces and the radio unfamiliar voices, even the WHO is lamenting a loss of personnel - researchers who should know the safety precautions, Christina says, incredulous as she sits curled against Pia on the sofa, and her hands folded around a mug of chamomile tea against the cold that won't leave her alone. 

Hyggelig, they'd call it, if they weren't so afraid, they say as a gust of wind throws sleet against the windows and the TV flickers for a second. They joke about the end of the world, but there's no heart in that, and Pia catches herself reaching for her throat, but her fingers find the rainbow flag pendant there, not the golden cross that she flushed down the toilet years ago along with the last dregs of her faith, bye-bye Jesus. 

It'd gone without a twinge of conscience then - she'd been high on love with the short, slight artist curled against her now, her hair back in its natural white-blonde now from the bubblegum blue back then, even though her name's a bitter irony sometimes, just as her own. Now, she wishes for that old certainty and comfort, when the reports talk about the army establishing a presence and treatment center in Kastellet. 

They can see the floodlights from their kitchen window, a halo of light over Pia's potted roses. 

Absent-minded, she presses a kiss into Christina's hair. There's her new comfort, rhyme and reason for six years now. The TV image flickers again, a moment of white noise. "Ant soccer," Christina says. "Find the ball." 

The signal comes back before they do, switching to a canned news recording from several days ago, with a prominent TV anchor who keeps scratching the back of his neck until his fingernails are bloody on the desk before him. He hasn't been in since, not that Pia has seen. 

"... putting curfews into effect in the following districts... "

She yawns and presses the remote to switch to an entertainment channel that's running as if the world's still normal. Some gleaming, brand-new car is hunting down a coast road in a commercial. Toothbrushes, face masks - that's new - vegetables dancing a parade down into a can. All of Copenhagen is on lockdown, and there's the advice to keep doors and windows closed against looters, at least that's the official spiel. She doesn't need that repeat, and rather focuses on something that's mostly untainted by all the weirdness.

As far as Christina is concerned, looters aren't the problem when there's tanks practically down the road. Other people have started saying that some government that's big on biological warfare finally snapped, or that there's been an accident in some biohazard laboratory and they've released a superbug that's gonna wipe out the world. Others still - Pia's sister Maria is one of them - claim they've seen _things_ that move behind windows where they have no business moving. 

Pia thinks - _hopes_ \- that part is overactive imagination. Things are bad enough without ghost stories spooking them any further. 

"Hey, do you feel like pizza? We should probably clear out the freezer first, in case the power goes away for a while," Christina suggests, draining her mug and pecking Pia on the lips. She tastes like the honey she'd used to over-sweeten her tea into a sugar sludge, but that's a spot of comfort, too. 

"Sure," she answers. "But the pineapple ones are all yours," she says, shuddering. "Make me a margherita." 

"I know, I know, you're not eating those, not even to indulge my sweet tooth," Christina laughs. "But at least you get something out of it when I do." 

Pia sticks her tongue out as Christina picks herself up and wanders into the kitchen, scratching the side of her head as she goes. Pia rolls her eyes when the commercials end, and the first thing in the movie picking up is a zombie snarling at her from the screen. At least the TV people have a sense of humor, she guesses. 

Humor is good. Humor will get them through this, and if they run out of pizza they have a cabinet full of canned soups, probably enough to last them until it's over. 

They're going to be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately no, they [aren't](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9885170) going to be fine. Sorry.


	21. Armistice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Onni/Reynir - “I might forgive you if you help me bring her back”
> 
> Reynir and Onni in the wake of Tuuri's death. (M/M with some fairly unambiguous but non-graphic sex). Warning for an instance of physical assault, guilt, grief and mild suicidal ideation. Not a happy fic, and open-ended, though not irredeemably dark.

Onni’s Haven lay in twilight, the sort Reynir imagined might shadow a Finnish forest after sunset in winter. The water lilies by Onni’s regular spot, the rock ridge on the water, were withered to a sickly brown. Frost clung in sharp slivers to the edge of the water, and the air smelled thick and acridly cold and humid all at once, like a warning sign that raised the hair on his arms, that the weather was going to turn on him any second.

It was a relief - the only relief, probably - that the awful smell of burned hair and skin that Onni’s haven had been full of after the battle night was gone.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that it clung to himself, though. Even in his dream-self. Even though his real body had been watching from the cat-tank while… while… while.

Reynir screwed his eyes shut, rested his hands on his knees, and hunched over to fight the tears that came rising up his throat like nausea. Mingled with it came… shame, and terror, he realized, and when he managed to get himself to rise again, his face was wet.

When Reynir opened his eyes again, Onni was standing between the trees across the water, watching him.

He turned and walked away. Slowly, one foot before the other, with exaggerated care and determination - Reynir recognized the walk; it was the way Emil had walked when they’d set out, like someone who didn’t trust the ground under his feet to not suddenly crumble below him, or didn’t trust his knees to hold him upright, or come home alive.

“Ah, On- you’re - wait?” Reynir reached out, despite the distance. His feet wouldn’t move. Onni had almost vanished into the gloom without looking back once. It felt terribly final. More tears came, and when Reynir had managed to blink them away, Onni was gone.

He went to the rock ledge and curled in on himself, and spent the night there.

He’d make it right somehow.

What he could still make right, anyway.

He’d make it right _somehow_.

* * *

The next time he came - he’d nodded off on a rest stop after marching half the day, although Sigrun conceding defeat had been the reason they stopped, and that in itself was worrying - Onni seemed to be waiting for him.

He sat in his rock ledge with his arms crossed, but the terrible blankness on his face was even worse than the anger from last time. Most of all, Reynir thought as he sat a distance away and stared at the water with him in silence, Onni looked tired.

“How aren’t you still - your owl?” Reynir asked after a stretch of forbidding silence that made him want to run away. “You don’t look like you got to rest enough.”

Onni didn’t reply, though he gave Reynir a look like he was considering an answer. The water scratched on the needles of ice growing on the waterline. Only now, how hadn’t he seen it sooner, damnit, what kind of person was he, really? - Reynir noticed how red Onni’s eyes were. He’d been crying.

Of course he’d been crying.

Reynir could easily remember the first time he’d looked into Onni’s eyes. They’d been immeasurably sad and terrified then, now they held barely anything. He’d change that, somehow. He wanted Onni back, grumpy as he’d been, but he also wanted back Onni’s hand on his braid, Onni stealing his cake, Onni self-satisfied, Onni pressing Reynir against the rock wall to bring their bodies together…

“I’m sorry.” Reynir hung his head to not have to look at Onni any longer. “I know it doesn’t change anything now - it probably never would have, telling you - I know magic is useless against the Rash, even if I don’t know anything _else_ about it, and if it were any different in Finland, I’m sure Lalli would have done it… and that’s why T-… that’s why your sister didn’t want you to know. She said you didn’t handle it well, being uncertain. But I… lied to you before that. That wasn’t her fault. That was all me.”

“You knew.” Onni’s voice was a rasp, and for a moment he hung back, motionless and shaking. “You _knew_!” Then his hands were glowing, tightening on Reynir’s throat in a choke-hold that could have killed him if he didn’t relent.

For a second, before instincts won out, vanished him from under Onni’s hands and jolted him awake to cough himself raw, Reynir considered letting Onni do just that.

* * *

Reynir’s heart beat high in his throat that night, when he made his way across the water another time, and fear made his feet sluggish - or perhaps it was the distance, which seemed greater to him than it had before. He stopped at the edge of Onni’s haven for long enough to feel like something out there was watching him, terror like an itch in the back of his neck, and that finally drove him inside.

If he had to die, he’d rather die at the hands of someone he cared about.

Onni was not there. Reynir wondered what he was doing; it was late, and Sweden, especially as far North as where Onni was, would be darker earlier. He ought to be asleep, and Reynir couldn’t shake the image of Onni sleepless in some bed that wasn’t even his own.

Not long after, the mist at the edge of Onni’s haven parted to let the owl in. The back of Reynir’s neck prickled again, with the same feeling of terror as before, when it fixed him with unblinking eyes and, landing on a stretch of level ground, became Onni, falling to all fours in utter exhaustion.

Reynir was at his side before conscious thought made him reel back with a hand already on Onni’s shoulder.

“I won’t kill you. I’m too tired.”

Onni sounded it, too, and moved like his every bone ached. Reynir decided to take it for as much of an apology as he was likely to get, and sat on a rock to wait, while Onni forced himself into a sitting position against the sloping bole of a pine tree. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, drew his knees up, and wrapped his arms around them.

“Can we… talk?” Reynir ventured after a while. Onni had not tried to kill him, and had not even told him to leave, or not to come to him at all. Knowing Onni, that could mean anything.

Silence stretched between them. Eventually, Onni sighed.

“Tell me what happened. Tell me why. _How_.”

“No one told you? T-Tuuri…” even saying her name sent a jolt through Reynir’s heart. He breathed in through his nose, in spite of the tears that came back. “Tuuri talked to Torbjörn the morning after it happened.”

“I have only been awake a day, and I left before anybody could tell me. I am waiting for the ferry to Pori this moment. For what I mean to do, I need to be with my own gods, not in a foreign country.”

“I see,” Reynir said, though he didn’t see anything at all. “What _do_ you mean to do?”

“I am going to bring Tuuri home. Tell me what happened.”

* * *

They clung together long after Reynir had finished speaking, and they were spent in more ways than one, after Onni had come to him, demanding and desperate. Reynir only hoped that he had told Onni everything, or at least all that he knew. He’d promised to speak to Mikkel the moment he woke up. Onni would need some time to make it all the way to Keuruu, where he first needed to find more mages who might support him, and it was entirely possible that he might still fail, and be doomed to something worse than normal death.

“… but you know I have to try it. I cannot be alone.”

Reynir hurt just thinking about it, and his bare skin lifted in goosebumps. He wanted to say that Onni was not going to be alone, that Reynir was going to stay with him if Onni wanted him to - but he could tell that none of that was the right thing. They’d never go back to what they had been, before his lie.

Before Tuuri had died.

Onni had said as much, rough and bent over Reynir’s naked back. “Do not take this for forgiveness.”

Unspoken, with it, but Reynir understood in the way Onni’s fingers dug between his ribs, the way his body tensed against him: Not even if she returned. Not even if Onni returned, whether he succeeded or failed.

He pressed his lips into Onni’s hair, held more tightly on to Onni, and refused to wake even as someone in the waking world shook his shoulder.

It felt like a farewell, even though it shouldn’t.

* * *

“No mage in Keuruu is going to help me. They all have reasons to live; no one will come with me.”

Onni sounded defeated, more than before, when they next met, where his plan before seemed to have given him a measure of comfort and purpose. Reynir had tossed and turned in the bed in the shelter they had reached earlier in the same day, knowing nothing was between him a stretch of forced idleness until the ship arrived. Especially now that Onni was preparing for the journey he was going to take - into Tuonela, trick the ferry girl into believing he had died, finding Tuuri, avoiding - or defeating - the Swan that guarded the Finnish underworld, and others of the death god’s kin - he had tried to make himself stay away from Onni’s haven to keep from distracting him from anything important that he probably didn’t understand.

And then Onni had come to him. When Reynir had come into his own haven, Onni had been there on the hillside, uneasy without a forest to shelter him, and watching the dream-sheep with bewilderment. Reynir’s dog lay at Onni’s feet.

The words came to Reynir’s lips unbidden. “I’ll go with you. I know I’m useless, but… I want to help. And I don’t have the same magic you do. Maybe…”

“You _can’t_  help me.” Onni pushed himself to his feet and gave him a pained look. Reynir’s dog did not budge, and Reynir drew heart from that. “How often do I have to tell you?”

“Look… I know I made a mistake,” Reynir said. “I know you can’t forgive me no matter what I do. But if I can do anything, even if it’s just because my magic is different and your rules aren’t the same as mine - even if I don’t really know a lot about what’s supposed to be impossible for me… I want Tuuri back, too. She was my friend.”

Onni looked as though he was about to take wing, keeping himself in his own earthbound shape with difficulty.

“I am not going to forgive you. I do not want to forgive you for keeping Tuuri’s infection from me. But if you help me bring her back, I _might_.”

Reynir rose from the grassy knoll of rock he’d been sitting on, too, hurried over, and grasped Onni’s hand, lifting it to his mouth. A muscle tensed in Onni’s arm, and Reynir thought he might pull away, but when he did not, Reynir laughed despite himself and said, “I don’t care if you do or not - no, that’s not true. I care. But it’s not why I want to do this. Let’s go.”


	22. Greatly Exaggerated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun & Any - we thought you were dead: Sigrun always makes it home. (Sigrun, No-Arms and One-Eye, at some point pre-canon.)

“We thought you were dead!”

“S-s-s-ounds like y-your thinking w-w-went wonky,” Sigrun said in between sips of mulled mead, and grinned. “I-I’m h-hard to kill.” Nevermind that her fingers still felt frozen stiff and barely managed to hold her goblet, and even the hot beverage hadn’t managed to stop her teeth from chattering yet. At least she was thawing a little under the blankets helpful hands had wrapped around her. Dagny and Kjell hovered, and Sigrun shoved Kjell aside, snaking a naked arm out of the blankets to pull Dagny against her instead.

“So what happened? Last we saw you that giant was throwing trees at you!” Kjell said.

“Five days ago. In the middle of winter!” Dagny added. “You should be a bloody icicle somewhere up the mountain!” Sigrun couldn’t help but notice how her grip tightened for a moment, and leaned in to peck Dagny’s cheek.

Then she put her feet up by the hearth, got comfortable in the blanket pile, and took another draught of mead. Her teeth had almost stopped chattering, heat blooming outward from her stomach in a wonderfully cozy, light-headed way.

“So… first, there was this bear beast…”


	23. Scrapbooking the Apocalypse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~~Any Prologue~~ OFC/OFC Character(s) - apocalyptic logbook: More from Pia and Christina. 
> 
> Pia and Christina have previously appeared in [Copenhagen After Dark](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10082138/chapters/25842555) and [Reappear](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9885170) (with this as the beginning, this is in-universe chronological order).

“Scrapbooking the pandemic apocalypse?” Pia asks as she enters the art studio with tea for Christina and a watering can for the plants. The smell of glue almost drowns out that of her roses. Her girlfriend is kneeling on the floor before one of her A2 sketchbooks, sticking newspaper articles about the Icelandic border closure from the day before into a shape of the island on a field of blue waves. The colour is shiny and wet, her fingers sticky with acrylics and glue.

Pia sets the tea on the floor.

“Something like that. Feels like this might just be it, and if anyone makes it out they might appreciate having the info about how the world went down. And that they should be headed to Iceland. Or Madagascar. Madagascar always survives.” She quirks a grin and wipes a strand of hair out of her face, leaving a smudge of blue along her cheek.

They both laugh.

*

It’s started pissing down rain. Autumn, cold season, but in every crowd in the city half the people are wearing face masks now, scarves to cover nose and mouth, face cloths. The other half is coughing and sneezing. Autumn in in Copenhagen, slightly more sinister.

Pia and Christina have decided to stock up on necessities and then stay inside as much as possible. The TV is running while Christina is soaking felt-tip colour into a bunch of masks they bulk-bought, to match the lurid colours of the boulevard press she’s working with this time. Pia is reading on the sofa until one of the tv anchors who’s recently come back from covering the infection hotspots somewhere in the Mediterranean collapses in the studio, folding like a garden chair.

Pia puts her novel down. Christina sets her art supplies aside, tongue still tucked into the corner of her mouth.

“Hilde? Hilde, hey, come on, talk to me,” says her fellow anchor, shaking the limp body by the shoulders. The woman groans and her eyes roll, then snap open. The camera zooms in. She shoves the lens aside and climbs back to her feet, leaning on her table. “I’m alright. Just a cold that got me. Try flying with that and forget your pills, it’ll mess with your ears and balance like a motherf– like crazy. I’m alright, Jan, _stop fussing_.”

Hilde is led away off-stage by the arm by a medic, and another woman rushes in to take her place; the program continues. “… and the Ministry of Health and Prevention has decided to further restrict traffic across the Danish borders, in addition to yesterday’s decision to temporarily suspend international air traffic. While the closing of the international air hub of Kastrup…”

They stop listening, that’s old news already. “Brrrrr,” Christina says. “Did you see her eyes blank out like that? It’s starting to feel like a movie.”

This time, no one in the little flat just off Østerbrogade is laughing. Pia just slowly nods. "I’ll go make tea. You want some?“

“Sure. Might as well indulge if we’ve got the end of the world coming for us.”

*

Christina caught the cold that’s been going around. Two of the patients zero are dead.

“I… don’t think I… ” Christina sneezes at the mountain of art supplies. The topmost newspaper has a blocky headline that Christina half ripped out before abandoning things, about the deaths. “… ugh. I don’t want to keep doing this. It’s been giving me crazy dreams, like… a talking pigeon? And crazy weirdness like the Nazgul talk from Lord of the Rings. You know how they shriek and just… ” she waves her hand. “They sound garbled. I’ve been hearing stuff like that.”

“Sounds to me like you’re running a fever,” says Pia. Let the doctor take your temperature.“ She leans in across the art supply table to press her lips to Christina’s forehead, finding it dry and hot under her lips. "Beep beep beep, your temperature is… I have no idea, actually. Hot. Let me find you some painkillers. You’re not going down to the gallery anytime soon, though,” says Pia, rising to go find the meds. No one’s going to buy art at a time like this. It’ll have calmed down by Christmas, and you can sell all your projects as the apocalypse that didn’t happen to that morbid weirdo who gave you the dead roses.“

"Maybe I’ll do something with the pigeon, though. She’s cute. Final project, something,” Christina croaks when Pia comes back with a glass of water and two ibuprofen in her palm.

“As cute as me?” Pia flicks some hair from her face and bats her lashes. She doesn’t feel like laughing, but if she doesn’t, then how is she going to convince herself that the world isn’t really ending? Something behind her eyes tells her that this time is serious.

“One of you is way cuter than the other,” says Christina, washing down the pills with a murmur of thanks. “Not saying who.”

That finally gets her a real smile. Pia pulls her onto a chair and straddles her lap. “I’ll just have to use unconventional methods to extract that information. And maybe some of those germs; I don’t feel like working tomorrow either.” She leans in to kiss Christina.

After all, people die in every pandemic, and who knows what kind of condition the poor early infectees were in.

After all, proper colds don’t stop just because the world might be ending.

After all, Christina has an art project to finish. The world won’t end before that, no way.

A gust of wind rattles the windows. The light flickers, as if in answer, and the topmost newspaper, the one with the death headline, slips from the tottering pile on the table to the floor, but just that moment Pia can’t bring herself to care.

After all, they’ve got each other.


	24. Memories of Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun/Tuuri - the hand remembers - I was a wing: After Tuuri's return, she and Sigrun try to work through the aftermath. (References to sex and nudity, though nothing graphic; probably on the higher end of a T-rating.)

Tuuri's touches on Sigrun's thigh were so light that they might not be there at all. It hunted a ripple of cold dread and tension down Sigrun's back, making her shiver. Tuuri paused completely, her hand suspended without touching at all now, though the warmth from her fingertips bled into the scars riddling her skin. Any motion of the ship should bring them back together, but they were gliding through calm waters without waves to speak of. 

"Don't," Sigrun managed to say; the words came out with a breath. "Don't do that. I'm not made of glass. Let me know you're _there_ ; this is giving me the creeps."

It wasn't really, but they were the best words Sigrun could put to the feeling. Under the hospital gown pushed up around her hips, Sigrun felt weirdly raw and open, in a way she couldn't recall feeling before, ever, a thread of nerves thrumming with energy that wasn't all unpleasant but still put her on edge, wouldn't let her close her eyes, and wouldn't take anything but the full strength of Tuuri's fingers, the full weight of her, the full heat of her mouth. 

Tuuri looked to her like she was waiting for more instructions, kneeling between Sigrun's spread legs. Uncertainty hung dark in her eyes. "Sorry," Tuuri said, and finally broke eye contact. "I guess I just need… some time to realize that I'm… back?" 

She reached for the rumpled hem of Sigrun's gown to tug it back down and cover her, then for the blanket, and slipped under it, nestling her head against Sigrun's shoulder. "I feel like I'll… grow wings again if I'm not careful." Her fingers ran along Sigrun's arm, the unhurt one, again so maddeningly light that it was the ghost of a touch more than anything. "I know they were not real feathers, it was my soul-bird, but I remember what it felt like. Fingertips, and then just feathers." 

Sigrun took her hand firmly and lifted it to her face. "Well, I'm seeing no feathers here, and I like that better." 

"Me too," Tuuri said quietly. "Maybe… we can just… go slow?" 

"I want to try one more thing," Sigrun said. "And we'll take it from there, okay?" She shifted, and coming down on her elbows above Tuuri, leaned down to kiss her without any more room for talk or protest. Tuuri's mouth opened warm under hers, and almost in reflex, Tuuri's hands flew up into Sigrun's hair, grasping and tightening. Her body rose off the mattress, warm and solid.

"There." Sigrun laughed against Tuuri's mouth in triumph. "Much more like it."


	25. 10-Word Ficlets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A collection of the 10-Word ficlets for that round of SynS.

**Snip**   
Tuuri - haircut

Hours until sweet freedom, her final obstacle falls, leaving lightness.

*

 **Bedside**  
Sigrun/Tuuri - hospital bed (4x10)

“Me? Thousand times,” Sigrun guesses. “More. Don’t you start that.“ 

Hard to squeeze Sigrun’s fingers; Tuuri’s tired. "Sleeping here’s nicer.”

“Than? Oh. Yeah.” Sigrun’s gentle for once. “Sleep. ’m here.”

Tuuri does, on pillows not ice, her rescue with her.

* 

**"What are you mad about now?"**  
Paju/Jonna - mad about something

Paju can laugh - into Jonna’s hair. Says, “You, you, _you_.”

* 

**Reopening after the Apocalypse**  
Helmi - Restaurant Closure

**_mORe ARmS FOr cOOKiNg. SpAreS stAFF aND MOneY. hOW cONVeNIEnT._ **

*

 **By Daylight**  
Berit Eide - flashbacks

Nothing’s new under the sun, Berit’s sure. But in darkness…

*

 **Taken Far Too Literally**  
Reynir/Onni - wet dream

Onni wakes, dripping, unsatisfied, to Changeling eyes. Damn Reynir’s squirming!


	26. Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun & Any - I need some fresh air: Triple drabble, of Sigrun trying to cope with the losses and the journey to the pickup spot. And a happier awakening. (Sigrun/Tuuri; some nightmare-horror imagery in the final drabble.)

The water stretched wide open before Sigrun, but no wind came from the fjord, and the stench of dead, sour meat hung heavy in the unmoving air. A lonely gull eyed her from a harbour building, but even the pest didn't come to feed on the giant. Possibly on the remains of Lalli and Emil, in between. She didn't look for identifiables - no heart or time for that. 

She should make herself leave - get back to fresh air, the wheelbarrow. The sooner they were out of this dump, the better. Gods or none, she still owed two lives safe passage. 

*

Sigrun was burning, and breathing disgusted her. She still could smell the dead giant on herself and around her like a cloud. The tent smelled like mould, and the sleeping bags like rotting plastic. All three of them stank; Mikkel's miserable excuse for food helped nothing, nor the cat's breath.

She pushed herself out of the trench between Reynir and Mikkel, and opened the tent's zipper only so far that it'd not disturb the rune. A thin inflow of icy night air soothed her fever to chills before too long. She sat vigil until her eyes felt heavy. Then - rest. 

*

The broken buildings loomed like ghosts. Emil, Lalli and Tuuri leered at her from empty windows, terribly shattered, torn apart, and covered in Rash sores, all three levelling accusatory glances from dead eyes. The dead giant's sour smell wafted at her.

Sigrun jumped awake, struggling against the hold on her, blankets, who knew what else. 

"Hey - ow - hey! _Sigrun!_ It's okay. Just a dream."

Tuuri's voice. Tuuri, who made their bed a narrow affair, who'd returned against all expectation with Emil and Lalli. Who insisted on being there with Sigrun, quarantine and after. 

Sigrun breathed in clean air.


	27. Tease, Rematch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun/Tuuri, some NSFW PWP fun. 
> 
> For the prompts: "Any/Any - muffle, discover, tease, sweeps" and "Any/Any - pressure, last, contact, heat".

Sigrun’s loud, pinned against the Cat-tank’s bunk wall as Tuuri’s on her knees before her. Such a way of turning tables, Tuuri thinks as she flicks her tongue and Sigrun bangs a fist against the metal with a happy curse, feral grin, and no attempt to muffle anything at all.

“You wanna tease, Hot Stuff, you’ll deal if they discover us,” she gasps. The main door rumbles open. They hush, breathe hard; in the still Tuuri sweeps her tongue over Sigrun’s clit, relishing the buckling knees, the whispered threat of sweet, sweet murder - and then does it all over again.

*

Their risk of discovery gone, the rematch is all pressure, Tuuri’s flipped forward onto Emil’s bed with her wrists in Sigrun’s hold, Sigrun’s free fingers remorselessly teasing. Tuuri won’t last long, pressing her face into Emil’s pillow and canting back her hips desperate for any contact, meeting only empty air until there’s Sigrun’s leg nudging her knees apart, and suddenly the heat of Sigrun’s open mouth on her.

Tuuri’s breaths stagger - _quiet, quiet_ \- but Sigrun wins coaxing out a noise that they _must hear outside_. Sigrun laughs in triumph. “Locked the door after the first time.”


	28. Reynir's Limerick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the poetry theme: "Reynir - being stalked by Sleipnope - limerick."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sorry. :D

There once was a young mage from Iceland  
Who longed to find palm trees and warm sand  
But instead stowed away  
In a ship’s tuna crate  
To the Silent World’s terror-filled wastelands.

Then one day that young mage from Iceland  
Stirred up some mean ghosties quite unplanned  
Now he’s being stalked  
By a horse with no qualms  
That instead of on hooves runs on eight hands.

That horse that is often called Sleipnope  
Won’t let our mage boy keep up hope  
It said with a glower:  
“I’ll your loved ones devour  
If you ever homeward elope.”

Then the Icelandic mage’s hope forsook him  
And he thought if the horse only took him  
He might save the rest   
From the ghost-horse’s quest   
And he went, although fear badly shook him.

But his friends Pastor A. and the owl mage  
Descended on Sleip in a mage rage   
And the horse fled away  
At the breaking of day  
And the Icelander lived to an old age.


	29. Eucatastrophe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More poetry: "Any/Any (Sigrun/Tuuri) - lovesong - [magnetic poetry](https://magneticpoetry.com/pages/play-online)". A miracle on the beach.

Your breath and air are broken -  
But look, girl.

This universe will need you yet.  
Your heart, laugh, life, voice,  
You, explorer,  
Brilliant in your joy.

So wake up.

There.


	30. Lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ensi (& Lalli) - spring flowers - haiku

Wood Anemone  
Grows as before the world’s end.  
Stalks crush underfoot.

Lalli pouts, fragile.  
“This could be you,” says Ensi,  
All safely distant.

*

Years on, under glass  
Unseasonal white bloom  
And lessons since learned.


	31. Moments in Onni’s Haven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Any/Any (Onni/Reynir) - lovesong - magnetic poetry" (Yes, again.) Obliquely NSFW.

Storm-drunk sky.  
Skin.  
After-ache.  
Worship.  
Forest-symphony.  
You.


	32. Humans in Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Swan witnesses an escape. For the prompt: "Sigrun/Tuuri & Swan of Tuonela - tfw you underestimate what a human in love will do" for the Femslash February best-of.

"Are you still hurting?" 

The Swan of Tuonela closed her eyes slowly - one blink for yes, two for no. She only blinked once, and even that tugged on muscles that throbbed with pain. Kielo's fingers smoothed carefully over the bloodied feathers at the base of her neck, ghosting upward to the other line of blood at the base of her skull. "Poor love. I should haunt them for this."

The Swan kept her head still on Kielo's lap, blinking twice, too tired and sore to speak. 

Sure, the Norwegian, who neither had a right to be there, nor a right to come armed with the mage's _puukko_ that she had had on her despite having no magic bone in her body, had beheaded her trying to get into Tuonela - beheaded her _a second time_ without so much as twitching in fear when the Swan assumed her monstrous form to stop the trespasser and her little escapee as they tried to leave - but Kielo's company had taught her a thing or two about humans and what they were willing and able to do. 

Especially humans in love.

"No?" Kielo asked. The Swan could hear the raised eyebrow on her face in the intonation of that word. 

Two blinks, again. 

After her death, a few years after her first journey into Tuonela, Kielo had forsaken her due sleep and rest to stay with her, had even helped her fight the mountain of paperwork that had accumulated with the Rash Illness, offering to take care of the people of Hokanniemi as a familiar face they might find comforting after their passing. She'd been there even after that, when the Swan had, secretly and quietly, started dreading Kielo's request to sleep. Her grief at the passing of so many people she had known in life had been breathtaking for the Swan, whose detachment let her be utilitarian about it. _Mostly_. It was her job, and everyone died sooner or later, but she'd be lying if there weren't some exceptions.

That was what she'd told herself, running strands of Kielo's dishevelled hair carefully through her beak. 

She'd been human once, so long ago that she didn't remember what it had been like, but some things, it seemed, did not change. Constants that, even beyond her conscious memory, felt right.

She remembered how the intruder had dropped to her knees in the water and started hammering away at the ice below with feet and fists until the sheet broke, and the Swan - then keeping her safe distance - hadn't been able to tell what of the wetness on her face were tears and what were splashes of water. 

She watched as the escapee clambered out of her bed and threw herself into the intruder's arms, and they held each other for something that seemed like a long time even for the Swan. 

Mostly, she thought as the intruder and her escapee made the way to the boat waiting at the border, and her attack had been half-hearted then, and over quickly. The intruder was a fighter, and not cruel about the matter of killing, and the Swan, emerging again in her proper form, appreciated that in her own utilitarian way. 

Two blinks, again, for emphasis. 

Kielo 'hrrmpf'ed, but there wasn't any real heart behind it, and her fingers kept massaging away the soreness from he tender skin that was restoring under her hands, happier to be there than to be away to haunt the two women like she'd once haunted that vandal for defiling her grave with a bunch of lily of the valley that had grown like a carpet and overtaken all other flowers. 

The Swan resolved to try and explain later, when there were words for it, if she ever could find them. 

But then Kielo, being human and staying with her for so long past her time, might just understand a thing or two about love.


	33. Endurance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the Language of Flowers prompt: _Agneta/Sigrun - Cactus: endurance_. Sigrun meets her first cactus. Contains some... uhm. Unfortunate innuendo.

"Almost there." Sigrun nudges a strand of sweat-damp hair from Agneta's forehead, draping the other arm around her shoulders. She can't afford any more comforting gestures - a sound has started up behind them and above; laboured, rasping breaths of something large that must be clinging to the rock ceiling of the tunnel. If not for their lamps breaking some time ago in the attack, she might try and blind it for the moment of advantage she'd need to kill it. 

Instead, she pulls Agneta closer against herself in their nook in the wall. She can feel something hot and wet trickle down her leg, stickying up her pants from the outside: Agneta's blood from the troll's bite to her upper thigh; deep enough to make her bleed like a stuck pig. Bad spot for a bite. Sigrun has seen more than one hunter bleed out from this sort of thing, and bleed out quickly. 

She'll be damned if she lets that happen to Agneta, too. 

If there's ever been a time for the First Rule, it is this. And isn't. Agneta needs a medic, stat. Any other time, she'd tackle the thing herself and make Agneta run - the train was just at the end of the tunnel, having backed out to make space for clearing out the blocked tracks, daylight running along the silver form and the sharp edges of that awesome chainsaw. She's hardly ever seen something as beautiful - but it is too far, and her busted leg won't let Agneta get there without support. 

Sigrun squeezes her eyes shut as the bulk of the troll slides past above them, grasping Agneta's gun from her hip and pulling it from the holster as quiet as she can manage. She weighs her options. The thing only has one head, she's seen as much. One shot, and then running before the rest of the bastards from deeper in the tunnel that'd actually probably caused the rock slide have a chance to catch up. They should just be able to make it. Or waiting until the thing reaches the train and gets in range of the saws. If it does. There is enough space between saw and ceiling that it might squeeze its fleshy bulk past the train's defenses. 

What decides it is Agneta choking down a pained noise. She sags a little more against Sigrun, and if the unflappable train lady is that flapped, there's no time to waste snuggling up and waiting. "I shoot it, we run," Sigrun mutters under her breath, taking aim and trying to make out the head in the dark. Her heart hammers in her ears. Agneta doesn't answer. Crap. _Crapcrapcrap._

"Okay, that's a yes. If you're dying on me, I'll come after you and kick your ass, you hear me. I'm getting us both out of here. On my count." 

Agneta still doesn't make an answer, but Sigrun can see the movements on the ceiling cease - far enough toward daylight for gleams to reflect off the wet skin of the thing, like folds of an awful meat dress draped over a skeleton. Her hand shakes as she takes aim, like that of a stupid rookie. She tells herself it's not the fact that Agneta's passed out at her side. It's the unfamiliar weapon and worn grip, pulling to the left a little, the dark making her jittery. She's had experiences in tunnels that she doesn't want to repeat, memories that are hard to shake. But it's just the gun. 

There. She finally locks onto the thing's head. The shot nearly deafens her, but it slices clean through the troll's brain and sends it squishing to the ground. That's the noise it makes on impact, too. _Squish_. 

Sigrun grasps Agneta's arms and pulls her over her shoulder far enough to get her feet off the ground, sprints for the train, the tracks bumpy and uneven under her boots, Agneta's feet dragging at her side, the sound of too many legs behind her from further in the tunnel and closing in fast, then silence as the new troll lungs, a weight against her back, the shouting of the train crew's voices ahead, the metal rail of the tracks rushing up to say hi to her forehead, hot breath and teeth snapping at the back of her neck. 

*

For some reason, while Sigrun swims in and out of consciousness later in between medic visits and throbbing pain, she thinks of a herd of stampeding Dala horses in Swedish colours. 

_The troll? The train…?_

_Agneta?_

She opens her eyes and sits up, groaning. It smells like hospital, her mouth tastes like cotton, a bandage has slipped half over her eye, and her head throbs like someone has taken a hammer to it. Concussion, or the aftermath of one; she's dealt with that often enough to know what it feels like. But if she squints against the brightness washing in from the window, she can see the rooftops of Öresund Base - safety, even though she doesn't remember arriving, or even reaching the train; there's a big blank after making a run for things with Agneta. 

Most importantly, though, there is Agneta, reading with her leg propped up and strung to an IV bottle, in a bed on the other side of the night table between them. Something drops in Sigrun's stomach, a weight of relief. It is too far to lean over and kiss her, so Sigrun gestures at the bedside table between them, with a stingy thing that is shaped a bit like a… well. Like a dick, if a dick were green, with fleshy ridges and spikes growing from it, and more than two balls growing at its base. It sits, all innocuous, in a pot of red clay, painted with a herd of Dala horses parading in a circle in colourful blues and yellows.

That explains the delirium, maybe. It doesn't explain the weirdness.  
.  
"What in all of Hel is that thing?" 

Agneta's lips twitch, then purse in what Sigrun knows is amusement, before she lowers her book and actually looks at Sigrun. "Oh, you are awake; good. I was starting to think you were going to make me wait the night as well." 

In her soft blue hospital gown, pale from blood loss, and her hair out of her usual loops, Agneta looks nothing like the train guard whom Sigrun has seen take down trolls in the blink of an eye, and the smile that tends to vanish when Agneta puts on her serious persona belonging with her uniform is back now, ever so slightly. It lights up her face even so. 

"I should just go back to sleep for that cheek. I could use another nap." 

"If you leave me to read this dreck any longer, I'm never telling you what that thing is." 

Sigrun considers this for a moment. "I know what it _looks like_. Do I need to know anything else?"

"It's called a cactus; Liljá bought it for us from an Icelandic merchant here on base. They grow them in their greenhouses." 

"Why?" 

"Apparently it means 'endurance' in the language of flowers. I wouldn't know, but you know she's an Old World aficionado, when they used to give flowers to mean something specific." 

Funny notion, that, if flowers on their own are something of an indulgence in Dalsnes, she never knew they could have meanings. For a given value of "flowers", because she has a hard time wrapping her mind around the fact that this is a plant at all, rather than some troll's attempt at a sex toy. And Agneta's co-worker usually has better taste. "Huh. I don't know, I kind of prefer the real things, if that's what I'm after. Less spiky to be around, even if they maybe don't last as long."

"Sigrun." Agneta massages the bridge of her nose, her telltale exasperation gesture. "They come from desert regions and don't need water, it's not about… the staying power... you're probably thinking of."

"Well, yeah," Sigrun mumbles, trying hard not to sound disgruntled at the preachy tone that's snuck into Agneta's voice. It reminds her of Mikkel sometimes, and the way those cultured city folks tend to behave like they know everything. "Just don't be such a prude about it. Get yourself beat up like this, and I want you to try and joke," she adds. 

Almost immediately, Agneta's eyes soften over her book. She knows by now that when Sigrun gets this type of defensive what the root of it is - they've had the same type of argument a few times, in one of Mora's museums or the opera production Agneta invited her to. 

"Sorry," Agneta says. "I just think it is a sweet gesture and should be appreciated for what it is. Without endurance neither of us would be here now; you saved my life. But…" she pauses, and her next thought puts a twinkle in her eye that Sigrun likes a lot more. She puts the book down, eyes the cactus, and then looks straight at Sigrun, her face deadpan. "I know you like them better in red. And to be honest... so do I." 

Just like that, Sigrun has one more reason to love this woman.


	34. Suit Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For SynS Remix Week, a prequel to foliefolio's [Live With It](https://synchronisedscreaming.tumblr.com/post/166410647495/live-with-it). Emil, overblown expectations and the adventures of suit-buying in post-mission Iceland.

“I… ah. I need a suit. For a memorial. Celebration.” Emil stumbles over the unfamiliar Icelandic syllables that Mikkel jotted down on the crumpled note in his hand. The seamstress, behind her counter, at work with her feet up, raises an eyebrow. She probably noticed the cheat sheet and thinks he’s an idiot, but Emil really needs clothes for that occasion, and no one particularly cares to go clothes-shopping with him, except for Lalli, who’s waiting outside and can’t help anyway. He’s envisioned buying his first own suit differently than this. More glamorous.

“Black,” he says.

Because that’s what it is that looms in Emil’s mind the largest. Sure, there’s press briefings and official Council business ahead too, now that the quarantine ship spat them out in Reykjavík, questions that’ll tug to light every ugly irregularity and reason for what happened on the mission, but they’re human somewhere underneath, so there’ll be a farewell to Tuuri, too, at the end of it. He doesn’t say that. It’s not going to matter to the seamstress, who pulls a drawstring curtain shut and takes his measurements. He wants to spill it out, and the words burn under his tongue when he picks out a wool fabric from the shop’s selection after, simple wool that doesn’t feel totally unlike the uniform shirts under his fingertips, with a slight shine to it. Maybe the familiarity will be a little comforting for all the sobriety of his first very own suit. But he doesn’t have the words for it anyway; they get by with gestures and fragments after that, keeping it on-topic.

And all the same, for all the wanting to unburden to someone who probably won’t even understand Swedish, he can’t help remember his erstwhile aspirations, eyeing the gold brocade at the back wall of the shop, or the needle-woven lace, the brass and enamel buttons, the pins under glass in the counter as he makes an upfront payment and is told - he thinks, checking against Mikkel’s list - to come back in four days. Some of the ornaments remind him of the tiny cupcake Tuuri spent all her money on all the way back in Mora.

Tears prick his eyes, involuntarily; the buttons blur. The seamstress pats his shoulder and says something that he decides is meant to sound comforting. He mumbles his thanks and makes his way back into the street, and startles when Lalli appears at his side seemingly out of nowhere, brushing a finger over his cheek, down a tear track.

Emil tilts his head into the touch, slightly, for a moment, until he feels something smooth and skin-warm slip into his palm from Lalli’s hand - a fang that Lalli took as a souvenir sometime along the journey, and that Emil didn’t know was for him. “Buy dress,” Lalli says in broken Swedish, in what Emil decides to understand as agreement, perhaps comfort, “so terrible.” Since their shared spell of Lalli coming into his dreams, he knows there’s an undercurrent in the things Lalli isn’t saying, louder than the things he actually does say, even when language isn’t in the way between them. He means, probably, the same thing, painful reminders and the suit’s main purpose and all.

It’ll be worse when it all gets untangled before the Council, and the thought of that makes Emil’s stomach clench. He’s not ready for that, but he has a few days to acquaint himself with the idea.

“It’s okay,” he says, and it’s easier now to swallow the words that wanted out earlier. Lalli was there. He understands, either way, as Emil folds his palm open to look at the tooth again, ivory, as long and thick as his thumb, and nothing like the dainty designs in the tailor’s studio. “Thank you for this. It’ll make a great pin. Much better than what they have back there.”

Lalli makes an agreeable noise, and they set off into the busy Reykjavík shopping street, shoulders brushing as they walk.


	35. First Kiss, Virtually

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For SynS Remix Week, a remix of [First Kiss](https://synchronisedscreaming.tumblr.com/post/165916623630/ten-prompts-ten-words) by worldsentwined. Jonna/Riikka shmoop.

Strictly speaking it’s not even their first kiss.

Their first kiss in real life, maybe. Riikka tastes like vanilla tea under Jonna’s lips, and smiles, and sunshine, but her little whispered ‘yes’ and half-closed eyes like she’s unsure this stays real if she closes them all the way are even sweeter.

And much sweeter than the text messages that fill up her phone’s memory, full of hearts and smileys and conversations that wouldn’t be read as ‘just friendship’ by anyone except them. But there’s one that Jonna treasures most. It simply reads “*smooch* ♥”, and was followed by a long period of no answer in which Jonna was trying to explain to Oona why she couldn’t get a stupid grin - and a blush - off her face no matter how hard she tried. She’s not sure, but she might be laughing like a giddy loon when, otherwise, she’d stick her little sister into one of the cold ovens for spying on her. 

When she finally texted back, she sent the message with a kiss to the screen, and fell asleep with the phone on her pillow. (At least that meant she didn’t have to rush to work for once, with the alarm going off right near her ear the next morning.)

There have been many more messages like that after that, and the butterflies in Jonna’s stomach learn to party harder and harder. It still takes them months to work up the courage to take it from the screen to real life.

In the end, Jonna wouldn’t trade either for the other, but one thing she’s sure as she sets another cup of vanilla tea and a sweet pastry in front of her girlfriend, who’s sitting at one of the bakery tables in a patch of sun that lights up the fragrant steam golden - Riikka tastes way better than her phone screen.


	36. Respite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For SynS Remix Week, Tuuri's reply to Yuuago's [Raspberries](https://synchronisedscreaming.tumblr.com/post/170480431890/raspberries). Sigrun/Tuuri, poetry, post-750. Also for my "It Was All A Dream" square of Ladies Bingo.

It’s always night in Tuonela  
no matter when your dream comes,  
however you reach across  
the boundaries between us.

Your hand’s warm in mine  
when you let me take it.  
Instead of icicles in my hair  
I’m wearing flowers, finery.

You bring white-snow petals  
and grass under my feet,  
blood pumping, heartbeat,  
rather than my quiet grave.

There aren’t raspberries  
anywhere in Tuonela,  
and no one to kiss.  
My sleep should be dreamless.

Your waking brings absence,  
the lapping of waves  
above my lonely bed,  
and longing for berries.

But I thank you  
for the dreams  
I shouldn’t be having.  
Maybe one night  
I can reach  
back.


	37. Epitaph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Sigrun/Tuuri - epitaph. A short poem, what it says on the tin.

They left no epitaph - no time:   
As urgent to be gone as luck that has run out,  
Leaving her steps in snow to salt spray of the sea.  
As urgent to be gone as her body falls to ash in fire,  
Snowfall and frost that thaws around the smoking pyre.  
As urgent to be gone as birds winging away to rest.

“We have to go”, and heartbreak, silence, and a fall.   
Until there’s time to mourn, that must be all.


	38. Carved in Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun/Tuuri - envelop, epitaph, flight, gleam, journey, laughter, reunion, stone, sunrise, touch, wonder
> 
> Tuuri gets a chance to visit her pyre.

The stone she picked up smudged Tuuri’s fingertips in black, and she let it clatter harmlessly back to the frozen earth, still staring at her hand. “Wow,” Tuuri said tonelessly. “It really happened, huh? That's… that’s really me. Or… was me.”

She couldn’t hear Sigrun’s steps approach on the frozen ground, but knew she was there before Sigrun’s arms came to envelop her. Ahead through the trees Vejle fjord shimmered, a landscape of ice floes in the gleam of sunrise as far as the eye could see, with only a small channel for the boat that’d brought them ashore. The pickup ship hovered in the open water further out, waiting for its team to finish bringing in the books that they had to leave behind in the tank.

“Yeah, it sure happened.” Sigrun’s touch to the pads of her fingers where the soot still clung was gentle. “Felt terrible - don’t do that again, okay?” The words lacked Sigrun’s usual bite or the easy laughter that came to her so quickly, and Tuuri’s heart did a weird lurch in wonder at the tone. She’d never heard Sigrun sound sad since their reunion. And before that… well. She hadn’t been around for that, not after her flight.

“So… why come ashore with me? You’re not scared I'll…”

“… do it again? Not after the first time. I’ve seen your nightmares, and you don’t have a reason. But I’d like to keep it that way; people are making an awful ruckus over there. Can’t say what they’ll attract.” Sigrun pointed her thumb behind her without looking; the Icelandic they could sounded ever so slightly on edge, orders that were much harsher than the ones Tuuri had heard on the ship. Nerves, she supposed. Warmth flooded her chest, regardless, for Sigrun and her protectiveness.

“I guess it… just feels unreal to me. Being dead did not feel much like being dead, after the actual dying was over. Just like being asleep. I needed to see it with my own eyes. And maybe… take home a reminder.” She bent to pick up the stone she’d dropped before, a scorched piece of rock from the pyre, the size of her fist. A person’s heart, she remembered, was about the same size. It felt fitting for what she was planning.

“Can I have your knife?” she asked, gesturing at Sigrun’s belt. “I’d like to… do something.”

“Okay?” Sigrun hung back as Tuuri sat cross-legged on the frozen ground and scratched away at the black patina that covered the stone. When she was done, she handed Sigrun’s knife back, and set the rock carefully onto the center of the pyre, the scratched surface pointing upwards. Her usual neat handwriting stood out in edges and angles, and it probably wouldn’t be permanent either, Tuuri thought, once spring came and rain washed everything clean. She’d not waste space and effort on a proper epitaph, not for someone who wasn’t strictly in that grave any longer.

“Good one,” Sigrun said, eyeing the inscription and pulling Tuuri against her again. “Make it a long one this time, or I’ll come after you again.”

 **Tuuri Kaino-Vieno Hotakainen**  
**Y69 - Y91**  
**Y91 - Y??**

Once Sigrun, her arms slung around her hips and her nose buried in Tuuri’s hair, would let her go, Tuuri decided to get the camera from the tank, but she didn’t want to, not yet.

They had time.


	39. Shards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Onni/Reynir - apologies, atmosphere, glass, hands, lies, nervous, owl, rain, runo, slam, teeth, unloosen, wrists  
> Onni - brittle, caught, education, harden, limit, prayer, tears 
> 
> Reynir reflects on Onni and his relationship.

Unloosen glass and watch it fall apart   
Into a million shards that rain like tears across the ground.   
All it would take, so Reynir thinks: A touch of hands, the pulse-point of a wrist to lips   
That, nervous, spill apologies for lies.

The limit’s this:   
Two different atmospheres, two different languages for prayer  
One pane of glass they’re caught behind on separate sides - an owl, a dog, like butterflies.  
It’s more than only quarantine.

Reynir remembers other, broken glass: a smiling girl behind. The cause of this.  
If Onni hardens more… his education never made him firm,  
It taught him runos, magic, lightning, but, like fulgurites in sand - he’ll burn.  
So brittle, prone to shatter, taciturn.

But, selfishly, what Reynir misses most: To have his back slam into rock  
Clash teeth with teeth, but fragile, close to fracture as they are   
That violence would be a shock. They both might break.  
In dreams at last he dares the risk. 

They might yet be remade.


	40. 280-Character Ficlets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Micro-ficlets the length of a tweet! Apologies to those of who follow me on twitter and got spammed with these.

**Any Y0 Character - The last tweet (Hannu & Ville)**

villes really my magic dog. he wasnt hit by a truck and died he turned human thought yall should know b4 were heading out to the lakes and the world ends #rashillnessisashittytrend #year0 #noonewillreadthisanyway #lastonesstandingbitches ville says: take care & dont get rashed <3

\---

**Any Prologue Character - Thank god, now I can check my twitter (Norwegian Prologue Characters, implied Sigrun/Aksel)**

What I'd tweet about?! Well maybe how a troll almost ate me and I killed it dead, Ingrid! That's pretty cool, isn't it? But my twitter feed was dead for days before the net went down, anyway - yeah, you know what, PROBABLY LITERALLY, Aksel, stop /crying/??!! Oh come here, doofus.

\---

**Emil & Notoro(s) - Food**

Yum yum yum food from gun food! So much food! Fish cans yum! Good to follow gun food and sleep food to food spot with yelly food and big food and braid food and cat food! Food food food --- SHIP?! Ship food? Ship food! Food food food! No don't go ship food! Come back ship food!

\---

**Onni/Reynir - Massage**

Pattering fingers like raindrops on Onni's spine like rain on a hillside wearing it smooth - same thing, much faster. And Reynir's good, skilled, happy, helpful - following hands with kisses until Onni groans, an anxious pause. "Good," he manages, low, smiling. Reynir continues.

\---

**Siv/Taru - What are your plans for tonight?**

Plans for tonight? 'Worrying,' Siv wants to say. 'Lying awake too late, fretting into my pillow over safe returns while Torbjörn snores next to me.' She can't quite smile, but there's a code for her and Taru. "Taking care of the cat?" she says, hiding it brazenly in plain sight.

\---

**The Crew - Reunions**

Headcount: One, most best. Two, big Dane, three and four against all odds, little Swede and sleepy Twig. Five, hapless troll bait. Six: Kitten. Seven, best of all because - how?! - Fuzzy-Head looking a bit like a fluttery bird. Can't hug them all at once, but Sigrun tries anyway.

\---

**Tuuri - Birdsong**

After the dark of Tuonela, summer makes Tuuri glad it exists - a whole season that's all bright nights of seamless dusk and dawn, no stars blurring through ice overhead in ever-night. Birdsong unfreezes the marrow of her bones, and if she listens close to them, she understands.

\---

**Sigrun/Tuuri - Wake up, sleepyhead**

Tuuri's still surprised at how tender Sigrun can be. She sleeps soundly next to her, safe, knowing that come morning, Sigrun will nuzzle into her hair, and Tuuri secretly relishes the snuffle and pause against her ear before the inevitable kiss and arms around to wake her fully.


	41. Camp Duty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the SynS instant drabbling prompt: **Sweater, saucepan, sparkling, somewhere**. Emil on camp duty during his stint with the Cleansers.

The saucepan was steaming, at least. That was something. Emil stirred it, careful not to slosh the canned soup onto the campfire. It wasn’t the sparkling type of delicious meal he knew from home - meatballs and spaghetti that made his mouth water and dream himself away - and when the other Cleansers of his troupe would return from - somewhere, wherever they were cleansing, they’d typically hardly leave any food for him.

Emil sat back on his heels, running the sleeve of his sweater over his face in frustration. Camp duty sucked.

Emil coughed and spat into the pot, stirring again quickly.


	42. Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the SynS instant drabbling prompts: **Long hair, pulling, danger, fingernails**
> 
> NSFW; just a moment of Sigrun and Tuuri having fun together at some point in a future where she's back among the living.

There was no danger there, Tuuri knew. It just was… well, it just was that Sigrun liked - _really liked_ \- being a bit rough, both the giving and the taking, and Tuuri… liked Sigrun sinking her hand into her grown-out long hair and pulling, an edge of fingernails against her scalp, over her shoulders and back that’d let Sigrun admire the welts afterwards and soothe them better with her tongue.

It was safe to arch her back into it; it was safe to include a hint of teeth sinking into Sigrun’s inner thigh, sweat and salt and all the sweetest sounds.


	43. Resurrescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the SynS instant drabbling prompts: **Dream, river, blood, resurrection**. The hardest part of breaking someone out of Tuonela is breaking yourself out along with her.

If she dies down here - no clue if she’ll be able to get to Valhalla. Shit.

A drop of blood into the dream river, joined by many more, clouding up the clear water until the blackness below swallows it all up. Sigrun keeps paddling with one arm, the other wrapped safely around her little sleepy-head, steering her clear of iron nets and whatever other traps are in there.

The other shore is far away, but this is too important to go under. They’re waiting - this is a resurrection - _resurrescue_ \- not another funeral. She’ll make it home. She - _they both_ \- will.


	44. Meditations on Mouthwash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the SynS instant drabbling prompts: **Quarantine, mouthwash, green, ocean** : Reynir finds some rest aboard the quarantine ship.

The Atlantic Ocean is pasture green where sunlight stabs into its waters - that’s one constant on the quarantine ship, and it helps Reynir, alone in his tiny cell, to fold himself against the window, nose and forehead to the glass. He finds the sameness soothing, after the adventures he’s had, and the spindrift might as well be sheep. The sea as pastures, the waves as sheep, the taste of mint mouthwash that’s a staple on Icelandic military vessels that all his siblings always complain about in letters to the farm… Reynir likes it: He’s alive, and he’s finally going home.


	45. Hungry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the SynS instant drabble prompts: **Judge, trousers, abnormal, charm** : A quick Emil/Lalli character study, mildly NSFW if you squint.

From the beginning, Emil had thought Lalli’s cat eyes were the worst judge. He felt - like an idiot. But only around Lalli. And only at first, until he understood there was inquisitiveness there, maybe more. Charm, even, as they warmed toward another, and Emil glimpsed quick hints of smiles, a crease of the corners of Lalli’s mouth and eyes, private, gone again almost as quickly. It made Lalli’s face seem less abnormal and stoic.

Nothing quite so stoic that time Lalli caught Emil undressing, trousers off. Not even on the train had Emil ever seen Lalli look so very hungry.


	46. Not Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the quotes prompt "I really don’t know what I love you means. I think it means ‘Don’t leave me here alone.’", Onni/Reynir post-first-adventure; SFW.

The tug and pull of Onni’s fingers, gentle for someone who could use those hands to devastating effect - crackling with magic in his closed fist, to slam Reynir into rocks or trees, or even the other, less devastating and rather more devastatingly pleasant use of them - wove through Reynir’s unbound hair with deliberation. Onni had finished one small braid and was combing out the snags and tangles in Reynir’s tresses now to start on the next.

“Where did you learn to braid?” Reynir murmured, looking at the rush of his waterfall when the answer came to him - of course. Onni’s face briefly saddening visibly gave him all the confirmation Reynir wouldn’t have wanted, too.

“I learned when Tuuri - when she was little she refused to have her hair cut, so to keep it out of her breath mask, our grandmother taught me.”

Reynir wished he hadn’t asked and lifted his head from Onni’s knees so he could rise and leave. It still was a sore topic between them even after the forced proximity on the quarantine ship to Iceland had made them solve the difficulties between them, and Onni had forgiven Reynir’s lie. It had already been too late at that point, after all. Knowing then, in his weakened state, might have killed Onni just as surely, and in the end, for all the pain of Tuuri’s loss, he did not want to die. It had been hard to untangle the chain of guilt and misfortune that had led to her death, and they’d come to no clear conclusion - only Reynir had had to promise that he would never place Onni in such a situation again, and in the end they had both tried to let it go, for each other’s sake.

Even so, the scab on that wound still was thin, with Tuuri’s spirit omnipresent around them, and Onni sighed heavily, but he stayed where he was. His hands in Reynir’s hair smoothed out another strand even as Onni blinked his eyes a little too rapidly for it to be normal. Reynir lowered his head back down to Onni’s knees.

“I’m sorry you have allergies. I’m sorry I asked,” Reynir reached up to touch his cheek, and Onni tilted his head into the touch, acknowledgment rather than anything more profound, but something all the same. Onni took a long time to warm to receiving attentions he readily gave - it was something Reynir was trying to help him get used to, so he buried his fingers in Onni’s hair.

“Mm,” Onni said now, and there was a shiver in that tone when Reynir’s fingers slipped over the back of his head, pushing him down for a kiss, brief as it was, before Onni buried his face in Reynir’s unbound hair, breathing deeply. “They’re better in Iceland,” he added. “A little.”

“I know your allergies improved,” Reynir said. “We have good air here.” With Lalli in Sweden with Emil to study more of each others’ languages in preparation for their summer season expedition, Onni had not had it in himself to make the long journey back to Keuruu. There was no one waiting for him there any longer - not until, if they succeeded, after the journey to find and bring back Tuuri - and Reynir’s family’s farm always could use an additional farmhand especially in lambing season, so Onni had been more than welcome to stay as long as he was ready to work.

“Mm,” Onni said again, sitting up straight and running a fist over his eyes. “Being here makes them easier. Company is good, too.” His voice sounded rougher than he probably intended, because he knew - they both knew - how transparent the allergy excuse had always been.

“Present company included?” On the edge of his awareness, something began making noise, a shrill ringing that grew more insistent and louder with each passing moment, until it resolved into the sound of.an alarm clock, and Onni groaned and curled his hand into Reynir’s hair as if to hold on to him as he faded into waking. The feeling of Onni around him, curled fingers and pointy knees and comfortable warmth rapidly becoming less substantial made him want to whine out loud, and even more so the forlorn expression on Onni’s face as he stayed behind in the dream alone. He knew - it wasn’t hard to guess, not after what Onni had told Reynir about Tuuri’s final moments - why he feared being left alone.

It was made better, a little, by finding the same warmth radiating off the body crushed into Reynir’s narrow bed alongside his own. In his few months in Iceland, Onni had changed from a light sleeper whom the noises of the sheep on the pastures nearest to the house might keep awake to someone who slept through all but unfamiliar sounds, including Reynir’s obnoxious alarm clock.

Reynir stopped the alarm and dropped back into the pillows, nuzzling along the familiar tension in Onni’s back, over his shoulders and neck until Reynir reached his ear. “Hey,” Reynir murmured into the unruly mop of greyish-blond hair, “you’re not alone. I’m right here if you wake up.”

Onni stirred reluctantly, but the tension went out of him hearing Reynir’s voice. “Mmm,” he said, the noise he probably made most often. “Morning.”


End file.
